VIDEO - “We must continue to talk to the Israelis
and try to work to find a solution,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said
following talks with French President Jacques Chirac on Saturday.
He said he had not lost hope for a lasting peace with the Jewish state. “We cannot say there is anything that is completely hopeless... We are partners with the Israelis, partners for peace,” he told reporters in the courtyard of Chirac’s Elysee Palace.
Abbas repeated a call for the lifting of an international economic blockade of a new Palestinian unity government.
“What we asked for is that the new government that will be formed not be subjected to the same embargo to which the current government is being subjected,” he said.
The Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators, comprising the United States, EU, Russia and the United Nations, is split over how to deal with the planned government between Abbas’ Fatah movement and Hamas, which Washington views as a terrorist group.
'We are partners with the Israelis.' Chirac (L) and Abbas (photo: AP)
The Quartet repeated
a demand on Wednesday that any Palestinian government renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept interim peace deals.
Though the unity government fell short of directly meeting those demands, Western diplomats said the agreement between Hamas and Fatah widened divisions within the Quartet.
Abbas said he believed Wednesday’s meeting was encouraging.
“I think the last meeting was a good meeting. The Quartet said ‘Let’s wait and see. ’It was not a rejection, it was an expression of a certain hesitation,” he said.
The US-led boycott of the Hamas-led government has pushed the Palestinian Authority to the brink of financial collapse and raised poverty rates in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank.
A report by the UN World Food Program, released on Thursday, estimated nearly half of Palestinians were unable to produce or access the food they needed.
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