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Abbas demands peace
08/03/2008 19:49 - (SA)
Ramallah - Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas called on Saturday for talks with Israel
despite a surge of violence and said that a just peace was his
people's goal.
"We condemn all the attacks, we demand peace and we are
determined to make peace, and there is no other path but the
path of peace based on international justice," Abbas told a
rally at his headquarters.
A Palestinian gunman killed eight Jewish seminary students
on Thursday, the bloodiest attack in Israel in two years. Hamas,
which had vowed to avenge the more than 125 Palestinians killed
in a recent Gaza offensive by Israel, claimed responsibility.
The shootings in Jerusalem triggered calls by Israeli
right-wingers for US-sponsored talks with Abbas to be
scrapped. Abbas' mandate has been limited to the occupied West
Bank since his Islamist Hamas rivals took over the Gaza Strip
last year.
The Israeli government said it would hold course. The Jewish
state, with Western backing, shuns Hamas, making Abbas the focus
of any hope for progress toward a permanent coexistence accord.
Talks between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
have been held up due to Israel's construction on West Bank land
where, along with Gaza, Palestinians want to establish a state.
Many Israelis have voiced reluctance to give up the West
Bank after a 2005 withdrawal of troops and settlers from Gaza
led to the rise of Hamas and frequent cross-border rocket fire.
Abbas, who briefly suspended peace talks in protest at the
fighting in Gaza, reiterated a demand that the rocket salvoes
stop and endorsed Egyptian efforts - so far inconclusive - to
broker a truce by Hamas and other Palestinian militants.
But the Palestinian president made clear his view that real
calm could only be secured by sweeping and sincere peace talks.
He listed core demands for agreement on future borders, the
status of Jerusalem, and the fate of millions of Palestinian war
refugees and thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
"If we were to get these, then we would be ready for a just,
fair and comprehensive peace agreement," Abbas said.
Olmert has pledged to work toward securing an accord with
Abbas before January, when US President George W. Bush steps
down. But, like Abbas, he is weak domestically. He also depends
on rightist factions to keep his coalition government going.
Israel has vowed to keep major West Bank settlement blocs as
well as the ancient Old City in the heart of East Jerusalem,
among Arab territories captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel considers all of Jerusalem its capital - a status
not recognised internationally - while Palestinians want the
eastern part of the city as capital of their future state.
- Reuters
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