Trust ye not in lying words… (Jeremiah 7:4)
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is heading to Europe to rally support for increased pressure on freezing Israeli settlement construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, according to The Times of Israel.
Many believe the trip is in response to a large number of Israeli government officials calling to a walk away from the current peace negotiations, which have borne no fruit since being restarted three months ago. Israeli officials have been pleading with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon the current negotiations following a number of terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria over the past few weeks which has left three Israelis dead and a 9 year old girl recovering from a close-range gun shot.
Abbas’s trip is planned to take him to Germany, Italy and Belgium, where he will meet with heads of state and push for them to ratchet up pressure on Israel to impose a building freeze in the West Bank, Maariv reported Monday, citing the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency.
The PA had long maintained that a complete settlement freeze was a precondition to any restarted talks with Israel, but waived the stipulation after the United States convinced Israel to release a large number of Palestinian prisoners.
Sources in the PA told Maariv that Abbas set up the trip in response to the Israeli calls to cut off the US-brokered peace talks and rethink the prisoner releases.
“[Abbas] and the Palestinian leadership hear the opinions in Israel that are talking about the possibility of freezing the talks because of recent events, and they are already preparing an alternative plan — appealing to the United Nations institutes with the goal of winning international recognition for Palestinian state,” the paper quoted an unnamed source saying.
On Thursday, Abbas told Palestinian TV that he was considering an appeal to the United Nations Security Council over what he termed as Israel’s continuous violation of Palestinian property as well as ongoing settler violence in the West Bank. Part of the deal struck between Israel and the PA was that Abbas would not turn to any international bodies to complain about Israeli action while the negotiations were underway.
Last week Minister of Housing and Construction Uri Ariel and other politicians called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop Palestinian prisoner releases and rethink peace talks with the Palestinians in the wake of the murder of Seraiah Ofer, 61, who was beaten to death by men wielding metal bars and axes outside his home in the Brosh Habika vacation village on edge of the West Bank.
The murder came on the heels of a shooting of Noam Glick, a 9-year-old girl, in the Psagot settlement outside Ramallah on October 5 . Glick was lightly injured in the attack.
“Again Palestinians are translating our desire for peace as weakness and are answering with murder,” Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin of the Likud party said Friday morning.
Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon told Israel Radio he blamed the Ofer attack on Palestinian incitement, and called on the government to reconsider peace talks and the freeing of prisoners.
