Fisking Abbas' speech at the UN

How many lies can fit into one speech?

We entered those negotiations [in 2010] with open hearts and attentive ears and sincere intentions, and we were ready with our documents, papers and proposals. But the negotiations broke down just weeks after their launch.

They entered them kicking and screaming after 9 months of a 10-month settlement freeze.

After this, we did not give up and did not cease our efforts for initiatives and contacts. Over the past year we did not leave a door to be knocked or channel to be tested or path to be taken and we did not ignore any formal or informal party of influence and stature to be addressed.

Except for Israel.

The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions, and that it frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the State of Palestine

The settlements have no expanded in years. The core issue is that Abbas refuses to compromise - on borders, on Jerusalem, on "refugees." And he bragged about his intransigence, in Arabic, less than two months after he broke off the talks.

Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the land of the Palestinian people and all of the brutality of aggression and racial discrimination against our people that this policy entails. This policy, which constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions, is the primary cause for the failure of the peace process, the collapse of dozens of opportunities, and the burial of the great hopes that arose from the signing of the Declaration of Principles in 1993 between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel to achieve a just peace that would begin a new era for our region.

Guess what? If the PLO would have accepted the peace proposal in 2000, there would have been no more new "settlers" on "Palestine"! Imagine that! Also, as Abbas knows, Israel signed no agreement to limit settlement activity. Nothing in Oslo mandated that.

The occupying Power also continues to undertake excavations that threaten our holy places, and its military checkpoints prevent our citizens from getting access to their mosques and churches, and it continues to besiege the Holy City with a ring of settlements imposed to separate the Holy City from the rest of the Palestinian cities.

So Abbas is saying that Jews have no rights to Jerusalem. Nice. As he also well knows, Jerusalem was not meant to be part of the Arab state in the 1947 partition plan, but rather an international city. He is using Jordan's illegal occupation as a legal basis for his own claim to the city. Yet Israel's annexation is, to him, illegal.

The occupation is racing against time to redraw the borders on our land according to what it wants and to impose a fait accompli on the ground that changes the realities and that is undermining the realistic potential for the existence of the State of Palestine

Define "realistic." They never have. They just insist on "1967" borders and Jerusalem. But exactly why can a Palestinian Arab state be on less land then that and still be "realistic"? It is mere assertion, the repeated mantra of "1967 border plus Jerusalem" that make people believe it - but there is not a shred of truth in that statement.

In recent years, the criminal actions of armed settler militias, who enjoy the special protection of the occupation army, has intensified with the perpetration of frequent attacks against our people, targeting their homes, schools, universities, mosques, fields, crops and trees. Despite our repeated warnings, the occupying Power has not acted to curb these attacks and we hold them fully responsible for the crimes of the settlers.

I know of lots of Jews in Judea and Samaria who have been killed by Palestinian Arabs in recent years. I am not aware of any Arabs killed by settlers in the same timeframe. By Abbas' logic, he is responsible for the deaths of the Fogels and others.

These are just a few examples of the policy of the Israeli colonial settlement occupation, and this policy is responsible for the continued failure of the successive international attempts to salvage the peace process.

He likes to use the word "colonial" - which is just another lie. Israel's interest in territory isn't colonialist; it is a recognition of the historic Jewish national home.

In addition, we now face the imposition new conditions not previously raised, conditions that will transform the raging conflict in our inflamed region into a religious conflict and a threat to the future of a million and a half Christian and Muslim Palestinians, citizens of Israel, a matter which we reject and which is impossible for us to accept being dragged into.

Abbas is claiming that by calling Israel a Jewish state it will turn the war into a religious war - yet his own constitution says that "Islam is the official religion in Palestine."! And of course, Jews are a nation, not just a religion - but that is something that Abbas will never, ever admit.

In 1974, our deceased leader Yasser Arafat came to this hall and assured the Members of the General Assembly of our affinnative pursuit for peace, urging the United Nations to realize the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people, stating: "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."

And he was responsible for the deaths of countless people even after he made that statement. Yet Abbas considers him a hero.

When we adopted this program, we were taking a painful and very difficult step for all of us, especially those, including myself, who were forced to leave their homes and their towns and villages...

Lie - Abbas himself admitted his family left voluntarily and never saw an Israeli soldier.

The 1948 AI-Nakba [was] one of the worst operations of uprooting, destruction and removal of a vibrant and cohesive society that had been 3 contributing in a pioneering and leading way m the cultural, educational and economic renaissance of the Arab Middle East.

Essentially all of the economic strides made by Arabs in Palestine before 1948 came because of the Jews. It was the booming economy that the Jews created that prompted at least 200,000 Arabs from other countries to emigrate to Palestine in the decades before 1948. Those people are all now knows as "Palestinians" - and many of them are desperately trying to prove they are really Lebanese or Egyptian in order to gain citizenship and stop being pawns from people like Abbas.

Thus, we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine - on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967.

No such thing as "historical Palestine" that coincides with the British Mandate - and this is proof that there is no real "Palestinian" history.

The occupying Power also continues to refuse permits for our people to build in Occupied East Jerusalem, at the same time that i t intensifies its decades-long campaign of demolition and confiscation of homes, displacing Palestinian owners and residents under a multi-pronged policy of ethnic cleansing aimed at pushing them away from their ancestral homeland.

See here. "The Arab population of Jerusalem quadrupled between1967 (when Israel annexed East Jerusalem) and 2008, from 68,600 to 268,600, while the city’s Jewish population rose by a factor of 2.5. Consequently, Arabs now constitute 35 percent of Jerusalem’s population, up from 26 percent in 1967. Since ethnic cleansing is normally meant to reduce the target population, if Israel were actually attempting such cleansing, it is surely the most incompetent ethnic cleanser in human history." (h/t CHA)

I confirm, on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, which will remain so until the end of the conflict in all its aspects and until the resolution of all final status issues...

He is trying to have his cake and eat it too...to say that even after a state is declared, it would be subservient to the PLO - which he conveniently runs. So when it helps his cause to pretend to be a state, he will, when it hurts his cause legally (especially with "refugees") he reverts to the PLO.

What kind of state is run by an organization?

...a just and agreed upon solution to the Palestine refugee issue in accordance with resolution 194

He is knowingly lying about what (nonbinding) UNGA resolution 194 says.

The PLO and the Palestinian people adhere to the renouncement of violence and rejection and condemning of terrorism in all its forms, especially State terrorism, and adhere to all agreements signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.

But at the exact same time, they want to be "unified" with Hamas - which rejects those conditions explicitly and repeatedly. Not a word about Hamas in the entire speech. Yet they are supposedly his "partners".

Our people will continue their popular peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation and its settlement and apartheid policies and its construction of the racist annexation Wall.

His definition of "peaceful resistance" includes Molotov cocktails, high-velocity slings and dropping boulders from the Temple Mount onto worshippers at the Kotel.

...the strength of this defenseless people, armed only with their dreams, courage, hope and slogans in the face of bullets, tanks, tear gas and bulldozers.

Now, why didn't he mention Kalashnikovs, suicide bomb belts, Grad rockets or laser-guided anti-tank missiles that are aimed at school buses?

Our efforts are not aimed at isolating Israel or de-legitimizing it; rather we want to gain legitimacy for the cause of the people of Palestine. We only aim to de-legitimize the settlement activities...

Only two weeks ago Abbas said "we have been under occupation for 63 years." Which is before 1967. So how is that not delegitimizing Israel?

I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people in the homeland and in 6 the Diaspora, to say, after 63 years of suffering of an ongoing Nakba: Enough.

He cannot even bring himself to admit that Jewish people find the land he demands is holy to them, too. Only Muslims and Christians, not the People who came before them.

As far as 63 years of suffering, let's quote Abbas from 2009, when he told the Washington Post that he is not interested in negotiating and is happy to allow Obama to pressure Israel:

He says he will remain passive. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life."

And this is Abbas in a nutshell. Not willing to make any hard decision, instead he tries to set up situations where others will do what he wants without him losing anything. That was his strategy with Obama in 2009 and that is what he is doing at the UN today.

 Anything to avoid compromising.