简体中文
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks that Israel has improved ties with Arab states are untrue, a senior Palestinian official confirmed Friday.
"I defy Netanyahu if he can unveil any improvement of Israeli ties with any Arab state," Saeb Erekat, Secretary General of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said in an emailed press statement, adding that "these remarks are incorrect and full of pure lies."
Netanyahu's remarks were made on Thursday in a meeting with the European Union Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini at Davos Forum. The remarks were made less than two months after he ordered his foreign ministry to suspend talks with the EU.
Netanyahu's meeting with Mogherini was held a few days after EU foreign ministers adopted a decision requiring all EU-Israel treaties to include a clause stating that they don't apply to the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.
In the meantime, Erekat described the videotape that Netanyahu distributed at Davos Forum as "a broken disk and one his incitement tools against the Palestinian people and their leadership," adding that "the videotape is part of the occupation' s government to hide the war crimes committed against our people."
The Palestinians accuse Israel of committing field executions to Palestinian young people who carry out stabbing attacks and of refusing to hand their bodies to their families. The Palestinians also say that Israel expands its settlements, confiscates lands, demolishes homes and imposes closures and sieges.
"The Palestinian people is practicing their legitimate right of self-defense while Israel only defends its settlements and its military occupation," said Erekat, who has been steering the peace negotiations with Israel over the past two decades.
On Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Netanyahu of toppling a scheduled bilateral meeting due to be held between them in Jerusalem two months ago.
Abbas' remarks were made in a meeting held at his office in Ramallah with a group of Israeli journalists, saying that "the arrangements for the meeting were thanks to high-ranking contacts and diplomatic efforts, but Netanyahu pullout in the last moment."
Direct peace talks between the two sides stopped in April 2014 after it went on for nine months and were sponsored by the United States. The two sides failed to bridge gaps due to deep differences on issues like settlement, borders and a recognition of an independent Palestinian state.
In October last year, a wave of violent tension broke out in the Palestinian territories between Israel and the Palestinians, killing more than 160 Palestinians and over 20 Israelis. Experts said tension mounted due to the absence of any peaceful solution to the conflict.
The Palestinians threatened that they would sever security and diplomatic ties with Israel if the latter continues its policies of military and security repression against the Palestinians and keeps weakening the power of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the West Bank.
"Our security coordination with Israel is still going on highest levels. It didn't stop and it goes on normally," Abbas told the Israeli reporters. "But our peaceful popular resistance against the occupation and against the fanaticism are going on and I support it," he continued.
Abbas also said that Israel's closure of peace in the face of the Palestinians "had obliged us to serious think about heading to the United Nations and all its agencies, we raised our flag at the UN and we call for holding international peace conference."
Earlier on Thursday, Abbas also told a group of Israeli women activists in a meeting held in Ramallah that both the Israelis and the Palestinians should go for peaceful popular activities in order to achieve real peace between them.
"There is an essential need for achieving peace for both of us although the Israeli government has violated all the signed peace agreements and treaties and has never shown any commitment to it," Abbas told the Israeli women, according to the Palestinian state-run news agency WAFA.
The Israeli women presented to Abbas an initiative that they are willing to rally and demonstrate at Israeli army road barriers in the West Bank to send a message to the Israeli government that it should end its violations against the Palestinians.
According to WAFA, the Israeli initiative aims at exerting pressure on the Israeli government to stop settlements expansion and all other violations and gets back to the peace negotiations table to achieve real peace based on the two-state solution.
