BICOM

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas told Palestinian activists he would not recognise Israel as a Jewish State and there would be no peace with Israel without the right of return for Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.

All are considered core issues to be resolved within the context of a comprehensive peace deal and have recently come under the spotlight after US Secretary of State John Kerry presented both Israeli and Palestinian leaders with a framework for final status talks during a recent visit to the region. Abbas told a crowd of several hundred Jerusalem-based Palestinian activists at his Ramallah headquarters that “the Palestinian people won’t kneel” and “Without east Jerusalem as a capital of the state of Palestine, there will be no peace between us and Israel.”

Abbas added, “Let me put it simply” that no “Palestinian or Arab leader has the right to deprive someone from his right to return.” Addressing Israel’s insistence that the PA recognise Israel as a characteristically Jewish State, Abbas said “We will not accept and it’s our right not to recognize the Jewish state.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday evening met with US Vice President Joe Biden following the funeral of Ariel Sharon. Army Radio says that Netanyahu expressed concern to Biden that Abbas’ statements did not reflect a determination to make the requisite tough decisions for peace. Biden also met President Shimon Peres and told him that “very difficult decisions” will need to be made but “I, like you, believe the Prime Minister [Netanyahu] is up to it” and hoped that “God willing” Abbas “will be up to the task.”

Meanwhile, Yediot Ahronot this morning reports that Israel’s Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon sharply criticised Kerry’s “sense of messianism.” In private comments nonetheless extensively quoted, Ya’alon apparently said that Kerry’s security plan is “not worth the paper it was written on” as “it provides neither peace nor security.”