United States To Oppose Palestinian Draft Resolution on Settlement Building
Abbas at UN Headquarters (palestinenote.com)
The president of the Palestinian National Authority called an emergency meeting of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Fatah in Ramallah following a conversation of Abbas with the president of the United States Barack Obama.
Settlement in West Bank (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
According to sources in Ramallah, Abbas and the president of the United States have approached the important theme of presenting on Friday before the United Nations Security Council a resolution draft that would condemn the settlements of Israel in the West Bank.
Sources say that the first thing the president of the United States told him was to renounce the idea of addressing the United Nations Security Council with the claim to condemn the settlement policy of Israel.
Obama is said to have promised that if PNA goes to the UN Security Council, the United States will veto the resolution in order to preserve a chance for peace and direct talks, considering that Israel has made it clear in more than one occasion that the relation with the Palestinians can only be made at the negotiation table.
The members of the Palestinian delegation said they would continue their efforts to obtain the resolution that would condemn the settlement building in the West Bank.
Nabil Sha’ath, Palestinian negotiator, said that Obama proposed PA to abandon the plan to seek the condemnation of the settlements in exchange for a resolution that would condemn them without holding a vote.
Israeli Settlement (life.com)
Sha’ath said that the Palestinian Authority would pursue the purpose even if the United States vetoes the resolution.
He said that the United States will lose a lot if they veto the resolution that will be presented on Friday, because they are now in front of a test of their fairness.
The president of the Palestinian Authority said that a new problem may arise if the local, and legislative elections are postponed due to the decision of the Hamas to refuse to hold elections in Gaza Strip.
The settlement building case was the reason for the collapse of the direct talks that had begun in September and went on for two rounds, one in Washington and the other in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt.
On September 26, 2010 the 10-month moratorium on settlement building expired and the settlements were resumed.
At the same time, Palestinian Authority made good on its word and stopped all kind of negotiation with Israel.
Any subsequent attempt at resuming the negotiations failed, given that Abbas insisted on stopping the settlement in West Bank, a requirement Israel has rejected under the pressure of the right-wing members of the coalition in power.
Meanwhile, the domino effect in the region is changing the geopolitical map with unpredictable consequences for the future of the negotiations, especially since one of the greatest allies of Israel, Hosni Mubarak, is no longer president of neighboring Egypt.
Palestinian Authority has taken a step forward into creating a state of its own, convincing some of the countries in the world to acknowledge it as such: Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay and Russia, the president of Russia paying an official visit to Ramallah in January.11
