Monday, November 09, 2015
Elder of ZiyonPresident Mahmoud Abbas said that Hamas conducted indirect negotiations with Israel, stressing that he knows the names of the negotiatiors and the date and venue of the negotiations and that there were direct meetings led by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in this regard.As I mentioned last time Abbas made this claim, this is seemingly the Ben Arieh plan, where Israel would give Egypt some of the Negev, Gaza would expand into the Sinai and a land-bridge between Egypt and Jordan would be established.
Abu Mazen, during a meeting with Egyptian media personnel at his hotel in Cairo, on Sunday, said that official projects being discussed between Hamas and Israel to truncate the 1,000 kilometers of the territory of Sinai to expand Gaza during the rule of ousted President Mohamed Morsi, pointing out that Morsi rejected the project to take any centimeter from the land of Egypt.
He explained that the then-Minister of Defense Sisi issued a decree that the Sinai territory is one of national security, ending the idea, but Abbas said that consultations are still underway between Hamas and Israel on this project.
In the past, Egyptian media has slammed this plan, because they hate the idea of Palestinians in the Sinai.
What is more interesting is Abbas' reaction to the fantasy-plan. He would lose nothing. He would gain a thousand square kilometers of land for "Palestine." And he rejects the idea outright.
Because the only land he is interested in is the land that Israel controls.
This is why the PLO never claimed any parts of Jordan (or Lebanon) as "Palestine" even though they were all part of "historic Palestine" as defined before the British Mandate.
Abbas' angry rejection of the idea of free land - land that would help Gaza's overcrowding, land that would increase Gaza's shoreline, land that could be used to increase the amount of agriculture in Gaza by a huge amount - shows that his only goal is not the welfare of his people but the elimination of Israel.
