Hawzah News Agency –President Mahmoud Abbas warned today that Israel’s continuation of undermining the two-state solution and its apartheid regime will force us to go to other options.
“We reiterate our absolute rejection of the continuation of the Israeli occupation of the land of the State of Palestine, of racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing against our Palestinian people. We also affirm our refusal to change the historical status quo of Al-Aqsa Mosque, to prevent worshipers from reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, to expel Palestinians from Jerusalem neighborhoods, and to designate six Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist,” said the President In a televised speech he gave to the conference "Self-Liberation of the Palestinians: Producing Resistance Knowledge".
“At the same time, we are still reaching out to achieve a just and comprehensive peace in accordance with the two-state solution and the resolutions of international legitimacy and under the auspices of the International Quartet, while we stress that the continuation of the occupying state to undermine the two-state solution and impose the reality of apartheid will force us to go to other options if the occupation does not go back on its practices, and take important decisions which we will discuss in the next (Palestine Liberation Organization) Central Council meeting, which will be held early next year,” he added.
“We will not accept the reality of apartheid applied by the occupation authorities, nor their oppression of the Palestinian people and their aggressive practices of seizing their land, confiscating their natural resources, strangling their economy, assaulting the identity and character of Jerusalem and its Christian and Islamic holy sites, and expelling its people from their neighborhoods. Nor with the demolition of homes of our Palestinian people, their killing, the suppression of prisoners, the withholding of the bodies of martyrs, nor with the unjust blockade on the Gaza Strip, which are crimes we will face and we will win over with the resilience of our people and their presence on their land,” he said.
On the internal level, President Abbas stressed the commitment to the unity of Palestinian land and people and the formation of a national unity government, in which all participating forces will abide by the international legitimacy, and to work to consolidate the foundations of democracy through holding general elections in all the Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem.
President Abbas called on the international community to pressure the Israeli government to abide by the signed agreements, and to allow the elections to be held in East Jerusalem, as was the case in the previous elections.