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Palestinians to apply for UN status despite pressure

09-09-2012


RAMALLAH, (Xinhua): Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday stressed that a request for a non-member state would be submitted to the United Nations General Assembly this month despite pressure to cancel the Palestinian bid.

Abbas, speaking during a news conference at his West Bank office, said that "At the United Nations, we want to say that we are a state under occupation ... we already have 133 states recognizing Palestine with (East) Jerusalem as a capital."

The pressure by the United States aim to prevent the Palestinians from seeking the membership in the United Nations, but there are other "Arabs" who ceased their financial support to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in agreeing with the American position. The Obama administration wants the Palestinians to resume peace talks with Israel, which has been stalled since 2010 over a dispute on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank.

The lack of fiscal support, together with Israeli actions, resulted in the PNA's inability to pay salaries to its employees this month, as well as the rising prices of fuel and other basic items in the West Bank.

Over the past days, public protests broke out in the West Bank against the high living costs there, with observers seeing that Abbas' Fatah party directing the protests against Salam Fayyad, the prime minister who is not a member of Fatah.

But Abbas on Saturday supported Fayyad by saying that the U.S.- educated economist "is part of the PNA and all of us, including me first, shoulder the responsibility."

Meanwhile, Abbas slammed his rival Hamas party, which controls the Gaza Strip, for banning elections committee from operating there and so obstructing reconciliation. "There will be no dialogue without the Central Elections Commission working in Gaza, " he said.

He also said that Hamas contributed to the PNA's financial crisis by not sending taxes to the West Bank.

Hamas depends mainly on smuggling tunnels beneath Gaza's southern borders with Egypt, and Abbas said that these tunnels created up to 1,000 tycoons in the coastal enclave. Israel imposed a blockade on the territory since Hamas routed pro-Abbas forces and took over the area in 2007.

Abbas also indirectly criticized Egypt as its president Mohamed Morsi received Hamas' Prime Minister Ismail Haneya in Cairo in June. "Whoever receives Haneya as a prime minister helps the split, " Abbas said of the man he fired when Hamas wrested control of Gaza.

Morsi and Haneya share similar Islamic roots as Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood movement.


http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-09/08/c_131837039.htm

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