PA officials deny rumors of Abbas plan to dismantle PA

Denial comes in response to Arab media reports claiming PA president to make "surprise announcement" in coming days.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
mahmoud abbas_311 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
mahmoud abbas_311
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Palestinian officials on Thursday denied that President Mahmoud Abbas was planning to resign or dismantle the Palestinian Authority.
The denial came in response to unconfirmed reports published in a number of Arab media outlets that Abbas would make a “surprise announcement” in the coming days.
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Ghassan Shaka’ah, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, described the reports as “unfounded rumors.” The PA is an organ of the PLO.
The resignation of Abbas or the dismantlement of the PA was not an “individual matter and would require a Palestinian consensus,” Shaka’ah said.
The rumors were sparked by Abbas’s comments during an interview with an Egyptian TV station earlier this week. In the interview, Abbas said that he was about to announce “something surprising and dangerous to the Palestinian people.”
On Wednesday night, he hinted at the possibility of dissolving the PA when he told a meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council that the “Palestinian Authority was not an authority and many people and institutions ask me about the futility of maintaining it.”
Abbas said that he planned to discuss the future of the PA with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal during their meeting set for next month.
Abbas said that when he met US President Barack Obama in New York last month, he asked him for an answer as to where the Palestinians were headed.
“The important question that we are asking is: Where are we headed?” he said. “We want an answer to this question and we want to know what to do. The Palestinian Authority is no longer an authority and this is the issue that needs to be addressed.”
Hana Ameereh, another member of the PLO Executive Committee, also ruled out the possibility that Abbas would dissolve the PA.
The future of the PA would be discussed by all Palestinian factions only after the UN Security Council votes on Abbas’s application for recognition of a Palestinian state, Ameereh said.
Ameereh claimed that the US has been exerting pressure on members of the Security Council to delay the vote until late next month.