Abbas: We ‘don’t care,’ we’re going for statehood

“Fierce Israeli onslaught against our people intensified after we went to UN to seek membership...but we will continue," says PA president.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Abbas 311 (photo credit: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic)
Abbas 311
(photo credit: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic)
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday he was determined to go ahead with his statehood bid in the UN Security Council despite Israeli “escalation against the PA leadership and the Palestinians.”
Speaking to reporters in his presidential compound in Ramallah on the first day of the Muslim feast of Id al-Adha, a defiant Abbas declared: “The fierce Israeli onslaught against our people and leadership intensified after we went to the UN to seek membership of a Palestinian state and the success we achieved at UNESCO. But we will continue and we don’t care about anyone.”
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Abbas accused Israel of stepping up settlement activity in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
He also complained Israel was withholding the transfer of tax revenues to the PA because of the statehood bid.
Abbas expressed hope that by the time the Palestinians celebrate the next feast, Jerusalem and the whole Palestinian territories would have been “liberated,” a Palestinian state established and all the prisoners in Israel released.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said that the Muslim feast was a feast of freedom for all Arabs and Muslims who have revolted against their regimes and are demanding the “liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem.”
He said most Palestinians are happy with the recent prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel and vowed to continue working toward securing the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Haniyeh said in a sermon at a mosque in Gaza City that the “real feast will be on the day Jerusalem and Al-Aksa are liberated.”