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Palestinian anger at U.S. over Israel talks fuels crisis bid for statehood recognition at UN
(Guardian) – Palestinian negotiators have accused Washington of triggering a diplomatic crisis which threatens to wreck the entire peace process. A senior official said U.S. proposals had been the ‘final straw’ that led to the decision to go to the UN to get Palestine recognised as a state.
President Barack Obama has vowed to veto that move and withdraw funding from the Palestinian Authority if Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas carries out his pledge to take his bid to the Security Council.
But Nabil Shaath, a member of the team headed by Mr Abbas that left for New York, said it was a derisory proposal from the U.S. delegation which triggered the move. Mr Shaath told the Guardian he ‘gulped’ when he saw the offer put forward by the U.S. [Israeli] team of David Hale and Dennis Ross.
‘This was the statement supposed to persuade Abu Mazen [Abbas] not to go?’ he said. There was no mention of Israeli settlements, of the future of Jerusalem or of refugees. It also included the demand that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a ‘Jewish state’.
The U.S., he added, was ‘not a neutral observer, but a strategic ally of Israel’.
- World Bank and IMF on economic development of a Palestinian State
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."