Perry to hold pro-Israel press conference this week

‘It was a mistake to agree to the Palestinians’ demand for indirect negotiations conducted through the US,’ Republican candidate says.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN, REUTERS
Rick Perry 311 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Rick Perry 311
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry will hold a press conference with American and Israeli-Jewish leaders in New York on Tuesday in which he is expected to address the upcoming deliberations at the United Nations, MK Danny Danon (Likud), said on Saturday night.
Danon, who will participate at the press conference, said he would ask Perry ahead of the conference to adopt the initiative the MK is advancing to annex Judea and Samaria in response to the unilateral Palestinian moves at the UN.
RELATED:US Republicans take aim at Jewish vote in 2012
On Friday, Perry accused US President Barack Obama of distancing himself from Israel and blamed US foreign policy “errors” for the Palestinian push for statehood at the United Nations.
Seeking to capitalize on this week’s Republican election victory in a heavily Jewish New York congressional district, Perry said Palestinian leaders believe US-Israeli relations have weakened and said “the ultimate Palestinian solution” remains the destruction of the Jewish state.
“Errors by the Obama administration have encouraged the Palestinians,” the Texas governor wrote in a Wall Street Journal column.
“It was a mistake to agree to the Palestinians’ demand for indirect negotiations conducted through the US, and it was an even greater mistake for President Obama to distance himself from Israel and seek engagement with the hostile regimes in Syria and Iran,” he wrote.
Washington has vowed to veto the Palestinian UN bid for statehood and is threatening to cut the roughly $500 million in annual US aid to the Palestinians.
Perry endorsed the veto plan but called on the administration to make US aid to the Palestinians conditional on their willingness to negotiate with Israel.
Jewish concerns about Obama’s policies toward Israel helped Republicans win a Democratic congressional district in New York this week for the first time in more than 80 years.
In a potential harbinger of the national Jewish vote in 2012, analysts said many voters in the district believe Obama has failed to support Israel and object to his call for Israeli- Palestinian negotiations to use the Jewish state’s pre-1967 borders as a starting point.