Netanyahu: Abbas speech shows Palestinians don’t want peace
‘There is no one else’ to lead process besides the US
NEW DELHI – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas revealed with his fiery and intransigent speech Sunday that the real reason for no peace in the Middle East is the Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state in any border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.
Netanyahu, in a briefing with reporters after a series of meetings with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said Abbas’s words will help Israel “present the truth” to the world. While much of the reaction to the speech has centered on his attack on US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu said Abbas’s statements, and not only the impolitic way in which they were said, will help Israel get its point across.
“If we ever want to get to reconciliation and peace, there needs to be an understanding why this conflict has continued for so many years,” Netanyahu said. “There is always an attempt to hide this, and I have worked for many years to try and get across the truth that the root of the conflict is the continual and, unfortunately, unchanging refusal of the Palestinians to recognize a Jewish state within any borders.”
He said without a change in
the position stated by Abbas, “there will not be peace.”
Netanyahu said Abbas’s outburst was a response to his concern about the diplomatic plan that the US administration is working on and part of his desire to remove the Americans from involvement in the process and find a replacement for them.
“There is no one else,” Netanyahu said. “For too long the Palestinian Authority has been pampered by the international community, which did not dare to tell them the truth. That has changed. I think Abbas is reacting to that. For the first time, someone [Trump] is telling him the truth to his face.”
Turning to Trump’s speech on Friday, in which he said he would waive nuclear sanctions on Iran for the final time to give the world powers a last chance to alter the 2015 nuclear accord, Netanyahu said this appears to be the last chance for the Western powers to fix the agreement.
Netanyahu said he told European leaders he met recently in Brussels that they should take Trump’s words about this matter seriously, but many thought he would never withdraw from the agreement and that his words were “empty.”
“I think that after his speech on Friday, people are starting to understand – maybe late – and to take his words seriously,” he said.
Netanyahu said French President Emmanuel Macron told him in a recent phone conversation that while he agrees with Israel’s position regarding the danger of Iran’s ballistic-missile development, support for terrorism and aggression in the region, he does not agree with Israel vis-a-vis the nuclear deal.
“I told him that if this agreement is not changed, then the aggressiveness of Iran in the region – terrorism, even missile threats toward France – will increase many fold,” Netanyahu said. •