Despite US president’s opposition, PA still to go ahead with plan to submit request for full membership of Palestinian state to UN Security Council.
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENTnabil shaath 311(photo credit: BLOOMBERG)
NEW YORK – Palestinian Authority officials expressed deep regret and anger over US President Barack Obama’s speech at the UN on Wednesday and reiterated the PA’s position for agreeing to the resumption of peace talks with Israel.They said that despite Obama’s opposition, the PA would go ahead with its plan to submit a request for full membership of a Palestinian state to the Security Council on Thursday.RELATED:Netanyahu thanks Obama for opposing PA statehood bidBarak: Obama's speech proves that he is a true allySome of the PA officials described Obama’s speech as a “stab in the back” to the Palestinians.“We are ready to return to the negotiations as soon as Israel agrees to stop construction in the settlements and accepts the 1967 borders as the reference for the peace talks,” Nabil Abu Rudaineh, a spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas said in response to Obama’s speech.But while Abbas’s spokesman was careful not to criticize Obama in public, other members of the PA delegation accompanying the PA president to New York strongly condemned the US administration’s stance toward the statehood bid.One official told The Jerusalem Post that Obama “has in fact endorsed [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu’s policy.” The Palestinians don’t consider Obama a friend and today he once again proved that he is afraid of Netanyahu and the Jewish lobby, the official said.Another official said that Abbas was “very disappointed” by Obama’s speech. “President Abbas said he can’t understand why Obama has changed his position regarding a Palestinian state,” he told the Post.“After all, it was President Obama himself who said in last year’s address to the UN that an independent and sovereign Palestinian state would be established by the next UN meeting this year.” Click for full JPost coverage
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