Abbas calls on UN Security Council to reject Quartet report
Palestinian official says Quartet is useless and should dissolve itself.
By TOVAH LAZAROFFUpdated: JULY 6, 2016 23:33Mahmoud Abbas(photo credit: REUTERS)
The United Nations Security Council should reject the Quartet report on the conflict with Israel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday.He spoke with reporters after prayers for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, in advance of UNSC hearing in the coming weeks on the report.Late last week the Middle East Quartet called on Israel to cease settlement construction and on the Palestinians to halt violence and incitement.The Palestinian Authority has been bitterly disappointed with the document, which it had hoped would blame the frozen peace process on settlement construction.They are also upset that the document does not call on Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines.Instead, the report remained fairly even-handed and Israeli settlement activity was only one of ten issues that it raised with regard to the conflict.Publication of the report was delayed by almost a month.It is presumed that the Quartet — Russia, the US, the EU and the UN — spent the extra time toning down the document under pressure from the US.A top Palestinian official, Mohammad Shtayyeh, a member of Fatah's Central Committee, told The Jerusalem Post that with this report, “The Quartet has lost its credibility” and has become “totally useless when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”This report will be tossed on a shelf and will never be implemented, he predicted.This is a document of appeasement issued by the Quartet at the expense of the conflict in the region.The Quartet as a body, “has lost its credibility” and “we are hoping that it will dissolve itself.”The London-based Arabic language daily newspaper al-Hayat reported Tuesday that the PA decided to halt its cooperation with the Quartet on the Middle East following the report.PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s office said, however, that the relationship with the Quartet had not been severed.“The Palestinian Leadership expressed its dissatisfaction with the recent Quartet Report. The Report offers an imbalanced assessment of the realities on the ground, and equates between the victim and the colonizer, while giving Israeli settlers a pass. As far as "cutting ties"---no official statement or decision has been made as of now,” said Hamdallah’s Director of Communications, Jamal Dajani.In Washington, in response to the al-Hayat report, US State Department Spokesman John Kirby said that all his office had seen was “a PLO statement that takes issue with some aspects of the Quartet report, and that’s our understanding, is that this is more a statement of their concerns and objections to the report itself."