Posts tagged UN
Sr. Palestinian Official Hints At Violence If Demands For Statehood Not Met
Sep 21st
‘UN statehood bid is only alternative to violence’
Senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said Wednesday that the Palestinians’ statehood bid at the United Nations is the only alternative to violence, stressing that the UN move will give the Palestinians the change to promote their rights.
“The UN is the only alternative to violence,” Shaath said during a press conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
“It will be very costly to us and the Israelis. Our new heroes are Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King.”
Shaath also said that the Palestinians plan to give the UN Security Council time to mull its statehood bid, which they are due to submit on Friday, before turning to the UN General Assembly.
“President [Mahmoud] Abbas doesn’t want [people] to suspect we are not serious by pleading to two committees,” Shaath said. “We will give some time to the Security Council to consider first our full membership request before heading to the General Assembly.”
Shaath explained that the UN move is part of a non-violent strategy to seek the support of the international community after Israel has not ended the occupation and widened the settlements.
“We are not seeking to join the mafia or al-Qaida, we seek membership of the UN. It will give us the right to promote our rights,” he said.
Earlier Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a speech at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, urging the Palestinians to renew negotiations with Israel, rather than seek statehood at the UN. source – Haaretz
Obama Tells Abbas To ‘Abandon Statehood’
Sep 21st
Hypocrisy at it’s finest
After 2 and one half years of telling the Palestinians that they should have their own state, Obama now tells them they can’t. Let’s see how well that plays out.
President Obama said Wednesday there is no “shortcut” to Middle East peace, as he urged the Palestinians to abandon their push for a statehood vote before the United Nations. Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly, the president restated his belief that the Palestinians deserve their own state but said a vote at the United Nations is not the way to achieve it.
President Obama speaks during the 66th session of the General Assembly at United Nations headquarters Sept. 21.
“Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations — if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now,” said Obama, who at the same forum a year ago called for an independent Palestine.
He said the decades-old impasse will be resolved only by “negotiated settlement,” something he said could not happen until “each side learns to stand in each other’s shoes.” Obama, while stating the vision of Palestinian statehood has been delayed for “too long,” used his address to assure Israel that his administration empathizes with its concerns and will stand by the Jewish state.
“Let us be honest with ourselves. Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it,” Obama said. While Palestinians must know the territorial basis for their state, he said, the Israelis have be assured of their security.
“Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians, not us, who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them,” Obama said.
The speech was just one element of the administration’s pressure campaign, in public and behind the scenes, to head off the vote on Palestinian statehood.
The president met after his address with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to be followed by a meeting hours later with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The two foreign leaders, who have not agreed to meet with each other, are on a collision course at the United Nations, requiring U.S. officials to intervene in a bid to ratchet down the dispute.
Abbas has threatened to bring his statehood push before the U.N. Security Council. The U.S. plans to veto the measure but would rather not get to that point, as the veto could further hurt U.S. standing in the Middle East. Still, Abbas could take the proposal straight to the General Assembly, where the Palestinians are seen as having the support to win what amounts to a symbolic recognition of statehood and slightly elevated status within the United Nations.
The White House, and the Israelis, maintain that the Palestinians cannot achieve statehood in any practical sense through a U.N. vote in New York. They say statehood can only be achieved through direct negotiations.
But Obama’s efforts to once again revive those negotiations have fizzled over the past year. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the leading candidate in the Republican field for the presidential nomination, on Tuesday sharply criticized Obama for his Middle East policy. Referencing the president’s criticism of Israeli settlements and public call for a return to the pre-1967 borders, Perry blamed the president for the current situation at the U.N.
Obama said Wednesday he was “frustrated” by the lack of progress over the past year.
During his speech, Obama also hailed what he called a “time of extraordinary transformation,” as he touted the Arab Spring gains of protesters across the Middle East.
He particularly highlighted the NATO-led mission in Libya to aid rebels fighting against Muammar Qaddafi. “This is how the international community is supposed to work,” Obama said. He said uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, as well as the resolution to an election dispute in Cote d’Ivoire, are signs of a changing world.
“This has been a remarkable year,” Obama said. “Something’s happening in our world. The way things have been is not the way they will be. … Dictators are on notice.” He said the international community will still “have to respond to the calls for change” elsewhere in the region, pointing to the repressive behavior of regimes in Syria and Iran, among others. source – Fox News
DANGER! Palestinians Begin Riots In Ramallah Ahead Of Statehood Vote In UN
Sep 21st
The Arab Spring has come to Israel’s doorstep
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Flag-waving Palestinians filled the squares of major West Bank cities on Wednesday to rally behind President Mahmoud Abbas’s bid for statehood recognition at the United Nations in the face of U.S. and Israeli objections.
This rally will soon turn violent if the UN does not grant Palestine statehood
“We are asking for the most simple of rights, a state like other nations,” said Sabrina Hussein, 50, carrying the green, red, black and white Palestinian national flag at a demonstration in Ramallah.
Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank under 1990s interim peace deals, gave school children and civil servants the day off to attend events in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and Hebron.
A large mockup of a blue chair, symbolizing a seat at the U.N., and giant Palestinian flags hanging from buildings provided a backdrop for the Ramallah rally, where attendance peaked at several thousand.
Israel cites historical and biblical links to the West Bank, which it calls Judea and Samaria, and to Jerusalem. It claims all of the city as its capital, a status that is not recognized internationally.
Palestinians said more people would have showed up if the authorities had better advertised the events. They also said the political divide between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which governs Gaza, had curtailed the turnout.
The main venues were far removed from Israeli military checkpoints on city limits and the rallies were peaceful.
But away from the gatherings, more than a hundred Palestinian youths threw rocks at Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint on the edge of Ramallah. The soldiers responded with teargas and used a “screamer” — a device that emits an ear-splitting high-pitched sound to disperse crowds.
There also were disturbances in the divided West Bank city of Hebron.
Later in the day in New York, U.S. President Barack Obama was due to meet Abbas to urge him to drop plans to ask the U.N. Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state. Washington says statehood should be achieved through peace talks.
Abbas has said he will present U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with a membership application on Friday. The move requires Security Council approval and the United States, one of five veto-wielding permanent members, says it will block it.
At the Ramallah rally, Amina Abdel Jabbar al-Kiswany, a head teacher, said the U.N. bid was a step toward statehood, but not a solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which direct negotiations have failed to resolve.
“It’s a cry of desperation,” Kiswany said.
Reflecting anger with U.S. policy, a Palestinian, his face covered by a scarf, climbed the stage scaffolding and set ablaze an American flag. Earlier, some of the demonstrators had tried to stop the flag burning.
Washington’s pledge to veto the bid for U.N. membership has added to deep Palestinian disappointment in Obama. The Palestinians have long complained of what they see as Washington’s complete support for Israel at their expense.
“America talks about human rights. They support South Sudan. Why don’t they support us?” said Tamer Milham, a 26-year-old computer engineer, referring to the new state of South Sudan which was admitted to the United Nations in July.
U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed a year ago after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to extend a 10-month limited moratorium on construction in Jewish settlements in areas Palestinians want for a state.
Netanyahu has called the Palestinian demand of a halt to settlement building an unacceptable precondition and urged Abbas to return to negotiations. Palestinians hope to establish a state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The Palestinian Authority has held sway only in the West Bank since Hamas Islamists opposed to his peace efforts with Israel seized Gaza in a brief civil war in 2007.
Hamas has dismissed the U.N. bid as a waste of time and there were no rallies in the Mediterranean enclave, where Palestinians argue that Abbas should be devoting his energies to bridging the internal political divide. source – Yahoo News
Catholic Priests In Middle East Say YES To Palestinian UN Bid For Statehood
Sep 18th
Catholic priests throw their support behind Palestinian statehood
Priests in the Holy Land used their sermons on Sunday to give their blessing to the Palestinians’ bid for United Nations membership.
The retired Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, the first Palestinian to hold the post since the Crusades, was to preach in the Roman Catholic church in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
A joint statement by Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran priests pledged their “support for the diplomatic efforts being deployed to win international recognition for the State of Palestine… on the June 1967 borders with Jerusalem as our capital.”
The priests went further than their bishops, who in a statement this week confined themselves to a call for intensified prayer and diplomatic efforts ahead of the Palestinian membership request, to be sent to the UN Security Council on Friday.
“Palestinians and Israelis should exercise restraint, whatever the outcome of the vote at the United Nations,” the bishops said.
“We call upon decision-makers and people of good will to do their utmost to achieve the long-awaited justice, peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu look set for a UN showdown next week, with Abbas planning to push for membership for a Palestinian state and Netanyahu arguing against it. ”Despite the pressures that we face, Palestine goes to the UN on the 23rd of this month to seek admission as a full member,” Abbas told Egyptian television on Wednesday. source – BREITBART
Norway Says Yes To Palestinian Statehoood
Sep 18th
OSLO, Norway — Norway’s foreign minister says the Scandinavian country will back Palestinian officials in their appeal to the U.N. for statehood.
In a Facebook post late Saturday, Jonas Gahr Stoere wrote “Palestinians have the right to go to the U.N.” and Norway is “ready to recognize a Palestinian state.”
Obama Ordered To Denver Airport Bunker By US Military On September 27
Sep 17th
The secrets of the Denver International Airport
It’s going to be a crazy week – the UN will vote on Palestinian statehood, a 6.5 ton dead satellite will fall from the sky, Durban III will convene, and the comet Elenin will align with earth. Now at the height of all this, we learn that President Obama has been ordered to the underground bunkers at the Denver International Airport. What could the government possibly have in store for us?
A disturbing report prepared by General Alexey Maslov, the Senior Military Representative of the Permanent Mission of Russia to NATO, states that he has been notified by the Americans of their plan to hold a DEFCON 1 “Cocked Pistol” maximum readiness alert drill on 27 September which will be overseen by President Obama at one the United States most secure bunkers located beneath the Denver International Airport.
Does this sinister mural at the Denver Airport contain a message from our government about the coming holocaust?
Under the SALT I Strategic Nuclear Arms Control Agreement signed between Russia and the US, both parties are required to notify the other in all cases of such maximum readiness drills occurring, but are not required to state their reasons for doing so.
General Maslov states in his report, though, his concern over this drill is “heightened” due to last months nuclear attack on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) branch of the intercontinental military tunnel complex between Washington D.C. and Denver, and which we reported on in our 24 August report Russia Reports Nuclear Explosions Hit Vast US Military Tunnel Network.
Abbas Says Palestinians Will Demand ‘Full United Nations Membership’ Next Week
Sep 16th
Dramatic speech in Ramallah
Palestinian leader says PA to proceed with UN bid in September because President Obama endorsed Palestinian state; ‘I’m going to the UN in order to demand our legitimate rights and secure full membership,’ he says.
Listening to historic speech (Photo: Reuters)
The Palestinian Authority will be seeking full United Nations membership in its statehood bid later this month, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas said Friday.
“I’m going to the UN in order to demand our legitimate rights and secure full membership for the state of Palestine,” the Palestinian president said in Ramallah. “We hope to secure full membership.”
We are the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and we intend to keep going until we secure full independence, he said.
“We are going to the Security Council,” Abbas added, but then made it clear that “all options are open” and that a final decision has not been made yet.
Abbas said the Palestinians will be aiming to “secure independence in the 1967 borders and its holy capital, Jerusalem.” He also urged his countrymen to avoid violence, saying “we must avoid force.”
Turning his attention to Israel, the Palestinian leader slammed the Jewish state for what he claimed was its failure to advance the peace process. He said that the refugee problem needs to be resolved, charging that the Israeli government only wants negotiations for the sake of negotiations.
Abbas added that the Palestinians are proceeding with their United Nations statehood bid in September because US President Barack Obama said previously he wanted to see a Palestinian state. source – YNet
