BICOM

The Palestinian Authority (PA) President told the UN yesterday that he intends to push for a UN Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

President Mahmoud Abbas insisted that “we remain committed to the agreements reached with Israel since 1993. However, Israel must reciprocate this commitment and must act forthwith to resolve all of the final-status issues”. Abbas said that “we will continue to exert all efforts for a Security Council resolution on the settlements and the terror of the settlers”.

He added that “we hope no one will cast a veto,” with the US likely to block such a move.

Abbas also alleged that Israel is violating religious rights at holy sites in Jerusalem.

He said: “Continued Israeli aggression against our Christian and Muslim holy sites amounts to playing with fire.”

Meanwhile, Abbas also suggested that the UN support a return to the boundaries of the 1947 UN Partition Plan. The plan would have seen Jewish and Arab states created in today’s Israel. Accepted by the pre-state Jewish leadership, it was rejected by the Palestinian leadership and Arab allies at the time, who instead launched military action precipitating what Israel calls the 1948 War of Independence. Abbas suggested that during that conflict, “Israeli forces seized more land than those allotted to them” and that the UN Security Council should “hold Israel accountable”.

Addressing the upcoming centenary of the Balfour Declaration, a seminal 1917 document which enshrined British support for a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel, Abbas demanded a British apology.

He said: “We ask Great Britain, as we approach 100 years since this infamous declaration, to draw the necessary lessons and to bear its historic, legal, political, material and moral responsibility for the consequences of this declaration, including an apology to the Palestinian people for the catastrophes, misery and injustice this declaration created.”