Free Republic

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Saturday that he has decided to severe all relations with Israel and the US in protest against President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled plan for Mideast peace. “We have informed the Israelis and Americans of this decision through two letters,” Abbas said in a speech at an emergency meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo.

A meeting between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and senior White House official Jared Kushner reportedly left the Palestinian leader fuming and refusing to agree to watered-down demands that Ramallah cut off payments for some convicted terrorists and their families. According to Palestinian sources quoted in Hebrew and Arabic media Friday, Abbas and his advisers accused the US of taking Israel’s side and refused a demand to stop paying salaries to several hundred prisoners serving time for the most serious crimes. Kushner, who is US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and chief Middle East adviser, met with Abbas in Ramallah on...

Paris peace summit, UN anti-settlements resolution and Trump entering the White House said to be behind agreement. 'A unity government is of strategic importance,' Palestinian official says. Hamas and Fatah have agreed to establish a Palestinian unity government, the two factions said in a statement from Moscow, where they were holding unity talks since Sunday. According to the deal reached in Moscow, the Palestinian factions - including the Islamic Jihad - will join the PLO institutions and form a new Palestinian National Council. The new council will select the PLO Executive Committee, the top political and diplomatic Palestinian body.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told world leaders Wednesday that he is no longer bound by agreements that have defined relations with Israel for the past two decades and are meant to form the basis for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict. But what sounded like a potentially explosive declaration was blunted by the lack of any detail on how he plans to move forward. Addressing the United Nations General Assembly, Abbas said Israel had repeatedly violated its commitments, most notably by expanding settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, on lands the Palestinians...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demanded Friday an end to Israeli occupation, telling the United Nations that the time for Palestinian independence had come. Abbas also vowed to seek war crimes prosecutions against Israel over what he called the 50-day “war of genocide” in Gaza that killed 2,140 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and left the enclave in ruins. “There is an occupation that must end now. There is a people that must be freed immediately,” Abbas said in an address to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. “The hour of independence of the state of Palestine has arrived.” Abbas, however, did...

The U.S. focus on Ukraine has shifted attention away from this week’s remarkable set of exchanges, direct and indirect, between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that speaks additional volumes about Obama’s take on prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. That Obama has an unbalanced perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is hardly a new insight. That, from the start, he has pressured Netanyahu to make painful concessions while asking little of Palestinian leaders on the hot-button issues of anti-Israeli hatred and incitement also is well known. But, the timing, manner, tone and content of this week’s Obama-Netanyahu exchanges...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Obama Claims Terrorist Dictator is Israel’s Best Chance for PeacePosted By Daniel Greenfield On March 3, 2014 @ 12:37 pm In The Point | 11 Comments This comes from the Jeffrey Goldberg interview with Obama which hits all the same old notes.If Israel doesn’t make a deal with Abbas, it will be more isolated than ever and Obama won’t be able to “protect” it. Settlement growth is out of control, Obama claims, when it’s barely a blip on the radar.Obama criticizes Israel, but not the Palestinian Authority. Instead he praises Abbas. Obama made...

While diplomatically inconvenient for the Western powers, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' attempt to get the U.N. to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state has elicited widespread sympathy. After all, what choice did he have? According to the accepted narrative, Middle East peace is made impossible by a hard-line Likud-led Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian state and continues to build settlements. It is remarkable how this gross inversion of the truth has become conventional wisdom. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu brought his Likud-led coalition to open recognition of a Palestinian state, thereby creating Israel's first national consensus for a two-state...

In interview with 'Al-Quds', PA president says Palestinians won't recognize Israel as a Jewish state, accuses Netanyahu of trying to "strip" Israeli-Arabs of their rights. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's talk about an "historic compromise" and said there would be no compromises on core issues such as Jerusalem and borders. Abbas also reiterated his rejection of Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. "We're not talking about a Jewish state and we won't talk about one," Abbas said in an interview with the semi-official Al-Quds newspaper. "For us, there is the...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has told his Fatah movement he wants a more specific US commitment on the borders of a future Palestinian state before agreeing to direct talks with Israel. Abbas says he received assurances from US President Barack Obama, but that they weren't clear enough. He says he expects enormous pressure, but that he will not go "blindly" into negotiations. Abbas spoke late Tuesday at a closed-door meeting with Fatah leaders. His comments were published in a Palestinian daily and confirmed by his adviser Sabri Saidam. The PA president is under pressure from the US administration to...

The London-based Arabic newspaper, Al Hayat, reported this weekend that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had proposed the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with a possible land swap of 2.3 percent of the West Bank to ensure a fair solution for Israeli settlement blocs. Al Hayat reported that the Palestinians agreed to leave settlement blocs including Gush Etzion, Pisgat Ze'ev and Modi'in Ilit, along with a swath of land overlooking Ben-Gurion International Airport, in Israeli hands. In exchange, the PA would receive land of comparable size and quality in the southern West Bank as well as...

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has euologized Abu Dauod, the mastermind of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munch Olympics in 1972 and who died Saturday. “He is missed. He was one of the leading figures of Fatah and spent his life in resistance and sincere work as well as physical sacrifice for his people's just causes,” said Abbas. Dauod, a former commander of the Fatah party that Abbas now heads, died late Friday night as the age of 73. Abbas’ eulogy and praise for the planner of the murders came less than a month after he told...

DAMASCUS, Syria — Mohammed Oudeh, the key planner of the 1972 Munich Olympics attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes, has died in Damascus. He was 73. His daughter, Hana Oudeh, says her father died of kidney failure. She says he was rushed to Damascus' Andalus hospital after falling sick, and passed away on Saturday morning.