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Thursday, November 17, 2011

Abbas lies again in Wednesday speech

Wafa reports on Mahmoud Abbas' speech Wednesday night.

It's filled with the usual lies. Here's one of them:

He said Israel was established based on UN Resolution 181 of 1947, which partitioned Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, on condition that it should accept this resolution and Resolution 194, which calls for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes they had fled from in Palestine.

“This is our right, which does not go away in time,” he said.
As I noted in July when Saeb Erekat said the same lie:

The easiest way to find out is to read the text of the resolution accepting Israel itself:
Having received the report of the Security Council on the application of Israel for membership in the United Nations,

Noting that, in the judgment of the Security Council, Israel is a peace-loving State and is able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the Charter,

Noting that the Security Council has recommended to the general Assembly that it admit Israel to membership in the United Nations,

Noting furthermore the declaration by the State of Israel that it "unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honour them from the day when it becomes a member of the United Nations,"

Recalling its resolutions of 29 November 1947 and 11 December 1948 and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the Ad Hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions,

The General Assembly,

Acting in discharge of its functions under Article 4 of the Charter and rule 125 of its rules of procedure,

1. Decides that Israel is a peace loving State which accepts the obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those obligations;

2. Decides to admit Israel to membership in the United Nations.
While the resolution "recalls" UNGA 181 and 194 there is no conditional language in this resolution at all. The actionable part of the resolution is unambiguous. Beyond that, the preamble explicitly notes that Israel clarified - at length - its interpretation of those resolutions in a number of now obscure UN documents (here and here, among others.) 


Abba Eban was, as usual, masterful in explaining Israel's position, and his explanation is referred to in this resolution just as the UNGA resolutions are. The language of the resolution seems to accept Eban's words as being just as important as the texts of the earlier resolutions themselves.


To sum it up: Abbas lied yet again.

And, to top it off, he showed his intransigence once again as well:
He said negotiations with Israel will not resume before it accepts the 1967 lines as the borders of the Palestinian state and stops all settlement activities.

“Without these two conditions, there will be no negotiations,” he said.
Ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homeland is now being positioned as a precondition to "negotiations."

And no one even blinks.