“Arabs made a mistake by rejecting a 1947 UN proposal that would have created a Palestinian state alongside the nascent Israel”
“Arabs made a mistake by rejecting a 1947 UN proposal that would have created a Palestinian state alongside the nascent Israel,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview aired Friday.
Palestinian leaders have always insisted that General Assembly Resolution 181, which paved the way for “Israel” in parts of then British-ruled Palestine, must be resisted by Arabs who went to war over it.
"At that time, 1947, there was Resolution 181 the partition plan, Palestine and Israel. Israel existed. Palestine diminished. Why?" he told Israel's top-rated Channel Two television, speaking in English.
When the interviewer suggested the reason was Jewish leaders' acceptance of the plan and its rejection by the Arabs, Abbas said: "I know, I know. It was our mistake. It was our mistake. It was an Arab mistake as a whole. But do they punish us for this mistake (for) 64 years?"
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blamed the Palestinians for the diplomatic deadlock, citing what he described as a refusal by Abbas to recognize the roots of the conflict and encourage his people to accept “Israel”.
Netanyahu's office declined immediate comment on Abbas's remarks, which Channel Two broadcast over the “Jewish Sabbath”.
Abbas, whose UN maneuvering is opposed by Israel and the United States, says the problem is the Netanyahu government's continued settlement of the West Bank, where, along with the Gaza Strip, Palestinians now seek a state. Israel occupied those territories in the 1967 war and withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
UN solemnization of their independence would help Palestinians pursue negotiations with Israel, which in turn could produce an "extra agreement that we put an end to the conflict", Abbas told Channel Two.
Asked on Channel Two how he could bring Hamas to agree to peacemaking, Abbas, himself a refugee from a town now in northern Israel, said: "Leave it to us, and we will solve it."
