Palestine calls for international peace summit in 2018
UNITED NATIONS: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ruled out the US as a broker for peace with Israel on Tuesday, calling for an international peace conference by mid-2018 with the key goals of full UN membership for the state of Palestine and a timeframe for a two-state solution.
Abbas spoke as the Trump administration’s two key Mideast negotiators who are working on a US peace proposal — the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special representative Jason Greenblatt — sat in the Security Council chamber listening.
Abbas outlined the Palestinian vision for peace, saying “we are ready to begin negotiations immediately,” but stressing it has become “impossible for one country alone to solve a regional or international conflict.”
He said the peace conference should include the Israelis and Palestinians and key regional and international governments, noting 74 countries attended a peace conference in January 2017.
“Israel is acting as a state above the law. It has transformed the occupation from a temporary situation ... into a situation of permanent settlement colonization,” Abbas said.
He said the principle of twostates living side-by-side with full sovereignty must be preserved, but he said the US has not clarified whether it is for a two-state or a one-state solution. And he called Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital a “dangerous” action.
However, Israel’s UN envoy Danny Danon accused Abbas of “once again running away” and refusing to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to negotiate peace.” Instead, he told council members that the Palestinian president has been coming to the United Nations “expecting you to deliver the results”.
“It’s not going to work that way,” Danon
said.