Addressing a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Central Council, Abbas said he would not accept any return to violence against Israel.“When Israel stops settlement activity for a specific period and when it recognizes the borders we are calling for, and these are the legal borders, there would be nothing to prevent us from going to negotiations to complete what we agreed to at Annapolis,” Abbas told the PLO legislature in Ramallah.
“A return to violence? I won’t accept it,” he said.
Abbas, who is under pressure from the United States and the European Union to resume talks that have been frozen for the past year, said he was not setting terms but simply reiterating Israel’s obligations under the “road map” agreement for talks.
It was Israel that was setting pre-conditions by insisting that Jerusalem would be excluded from negotiations and that settlement expansion would continue, he said. The PLO council began a two-day meeting which was expected to extend the term of Abbas and endorse his opposition to re-starting negotiations with Israel unless it first halts all settlement building in the occupied West Bank. Abbas said the 10-month freeze ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month was not sufficient, since it was only a partial halt to construction and Israel was now pouring more money into the settler communities.
Abbas, 74, has built his career around trying to negotiate a permanent peace with Israel. His presidency of the Palestinian Authority expires on Jan. 25. An election to choose his successor was canceled after Hamas said it would prohibit voting in the Gaza Strip, which it controls.
The Fatah movement, which dominates the PLO and is led by Abbas, has called on him to stay in office until elections can be held in Gaza as well as the West Bank. Abbas has made it clear he will not seek a second term.
