UNITED NATIONS -- The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, accused Israel on Friday of failing to negotiate in good faith, said any return to negotiations would be "naive at best" and called on the Security Council to press for a specific deadline to end Israeli occupation.
"It is impossible, and I repeat -- it is impossible -- to return to the cycle of negotiations that failed to deal with the substance of the matter and the fundamental question," Abbas said at the annual session of the General Assembly, reading from a prepared text but visibly enraged. "The time has come to end this settlement occupation."
His speech, however, was short on details. He did not offer his own specific deadline for an Israeli withdrawal, as some had expected, nor did he say anything about joining the International Criminal Court, which his aides have repeatedly said he is prepared to do. He only hinted obliquely that he would seek accountability for alleged war crimes against Palestinians during the latest war with Israel.
"In the name of Palestine and its people, I affirm here today: We will not forget, and we will not forgive, and we will not allow war criminals to escape punishment," Abbas said in a 30-minute address.
Palestinian diplomats have been pushing their Arab country peers at the United Nations to propose a Security Council resolution that would detail a time frame for ending Israeli occupation and call for talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority to demarcate the borders of two independent states. No resolution has yet been proposed, and the United States has said nothing about whether it intends to support it. U.S. diplomats have repeatedly said they want both sides to return to negotiations.
Hamas militants in Gaza, who fired rockets and dug tunnels into Israel, battled with the Israeli military for 50 days this summer. The war leveled entire neighborhoods of Gaza.
Israeli bombs damaged more than 100 U.N. schools and hospitals, which Israeli authorities said were near Hamas holdouts. The United Nations said 2,150 Palestinians, including 500 children, were killed. On the Israeli side, 67 soldiers and six civilians were killed, including one child.
A fragile cease-fire agreement, negotiated in Cairo, has held for a month, and the two sides last week agreed to let reconstruction materials move into Gaza, monitored by the United Nations to ensure that they are for civilian projects. Israel has repeatedly said cement and steel are diverted by Hamas to build tunnels to attack Israel. The cease-fire agreement says nothing about disarming Hamas.
Abbas described the Israeli occupation as "an abhorrent form of state terrorism and a breeding ground for incitement, tension and hatred."
A Section on 09/27/2014