PA Says No to Shrunk Palestinian State

The Palestinian Authority has rebuffed the idea of a downsized Palestinian state which is marked out of the ideal with makeshift borders.

Acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday said the Palestinians were asked to "take a state with provisional borders on 40 or 50 percent, and after that we will see," the Associated Press reported.

"Frankly, we will not accept the state with temporary borders, because it is being offered these days," he added, addressing the leaders of his Fatah party.

The Palestinian side wants Israel to enforce a permanent and complete freeze on its settlement expansion in the entire occupied territories as a precondition for the resumption of the so-called peace talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, however, recurrently rejected a total freeze on the expansion of the settler units, repeating former and current Israeli leaders.

He recently went further by offering his own version of the Palestinian demand by narrowing down the occupied territories where the stoppage is urged.

"The Palestinian demand is that we prevent Jews from building in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem (al-Quds), Netanyahu was quoted as saying in an ABC interview by China’s official news agency, Xinhua.

As part of the West Bank, Israel occupied al-Quds in 1967 before implementing a policy of annexation — a move that has been condemned as illegal by the international community.

Israel’s invariable refusal to meet the Palestinian condition has resulted in a long-lasting standoff on the matter.

The stalemate was coupled with Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 offensives against the Gaza Strip, which claimed the lives of more than 1,400 Palestinians. A UN-commissioned inquiry into the massive offensive charged the Tel Aviv regime with committing war crimes during the raids.

(Press TV)

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