Vice Premier Moshe Ya’alon (Likud) ruled out the possibility of establishing a
Palestinian state alongside Israel in a speech at a cultural event on Saturday
afternoon in the South Sharon Regional Council.
Ya’alon complained about
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejecting repeated overtures from
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the international community rewarding his
intransigence by recognizing Palestine as an non-member observer state in the
United Nations. And last Friday, the PA officially changed its name to the State
of Palestine, and Abbas officially signed his first decrees bearing that
name.
“As far as I’m concerned, Gaza can call itself the United Islamic
Republic and the Palestinian Authority can call itself the Palestinian Empire,”
he said.
“There are those who are trying to market Abbas as relatively
moderate, but his goals are the same as those of Hamas. He does not believe in
an agreement based on pre-1967 lines and he is refusing to come to the
negotiating table.”
The Labor Party’s No. 2 candidate, MK Isaac Herzog,
attacked Ya’alon, saying that his statements “amplify the despair and lead
Israel to a conflict with its back against the wall.”
Ya’alon also
blasted former foreign minister Tzipi Livni for blaming the lack of a peace
process on Israel, despite seeing the offers former prime minister Ehud Olmert
made to Abbas that were not accepted.
Livni called for the renewal of the
peace process at a cultural event Saturday in Jerusalem.
“The United
Nations’ decision was just the overture,” the Tzipi Livni Party leader warned.
“We are sitting on a volcano that is due to erupt in March, when the world will
lay a diplomatic plan on the table. Either they will impose a plan on us, or we
can initiate our own plan.”
According to a directive issued by Abbas last
week, within two months, Palestinians will receive driving licenses, passports
and identity cards stamped with the title “State of Palestine.”
The new
documents will replace all previous documents, which since 1993 when the Oslo
Accords were signed, have borne stamps of the Palestinian Authority. According
to Abbas’s decision, these documents will be available not only to West Bank
residents, but also to Palestinian refugees around the world and Gaza residents.