By David Singer ——Bio and Archives--January 12, 2015
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"We have 6,205 square kilometers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. We want it as it is."There were four "small" problems confronting Abbas-- that he was not prepared to recognise and USA Today to question or challenge:
"We will renew negotiations if the settlements are completely halted and the 1967 borders recognized as the borders of the Palestinian state,"The New York Times obligingly gave credence to Abbas's claims on 19 May 2011 with a story under a banner headline "Obama sees '67 borders as starting point for peace talks" followed by this misleading report accompanied by a supposedly accurate map showing the "Green Line Pre-1967 border":
"A day before the arrival in Washington of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Obama declared that the prevailing borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war--adjusted to some degree to account for Israeli settlements in the West Bank--should be the basis of a deal. While the 1967 borders have long been viewed as the foundation for a peace agreement, Mr. Obama's formula of land swaps to compensate for disputed territory created a new benchmark for a diplomatic solution."Suitably emboldened with the New York Times unquestionably uttering the same nonsense as he was-- Abbas sent a letter to the UN Secretary General dated 23 September 2011 applying for membership of the the UN. Abbas-- signing as "President of the State of Palestine [a non-existent legal entity--ed.], Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization"- brazenly repeated his earlier claims-- this time seeking to implicate most of the international community in his fantasy.
"Furthermore, the vast majority of the international community has stood in support of our inalienable rights as a people, including to statehood, by according bilateral recognition to the State of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the number of such recognitions continues to rise with each passing day."Abbas was at it again in 2012-- as BBC News reported him saying:
"Palestine for me is the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital. This is Palestine,"With Abbas last week choosing the path of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court in preference to resuming negotiations with Israel-- he surely has succumbed to his own propaganda and sown the seeds for his own fall from grace. He has shown himself unwilling to be bound by the procedures laid out in the Oslo Accords, the Bush Roadmap and Security Council Resolution 242-- the internationally laid down parameters under which an end to the Jewish-Arab conflict was to be negotiated and resolved. An opportunity could now be opening for negotiations between Israel, Egypt and Jordan - the parties to those 1949 and 1950 armistice lines-- to try and transform them into lasting and permanent borders. A little bit of intellectual honesty can go a long way.
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David Singer is an Australian Lawyer, a Foundation Member of the International Analyst Network and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International—an organization calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine. Previous articles written by him can be found at: jordanispalestine.blogspot.com