RAMALLAH, Saturday, March 23, 2019 (WAFA) – President Mahmoud Abbas told students from Harvard University in the United States that recent American and Israeli measures against the Palestinian people have made life very difficult for them and there is no telling how things will turn out in the coming days.
Abbas briefed the students who visited him at his Ramallah headquarters on the recent developments regarding the Palestinian situation, telling them in details about the history of Palestinian-US relations and Palestinian-Israeli relations and how they deteriorated recently due to unfair American and Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
As a result, he said, the US lost its status as a fair peace broker and therefore it can no longer play the role of sole mediator without other nations being involved. “We will not accept it alone,” he said, telling US President Donald Trump to abide by the international resolutions and stop making his own rules and decision on issues such as the occupied Golan Heights and Jerusalem. “This is unacceptable,” he said.
“What we want is our independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders, with an agreement on the outstanding issues we discussed with the Israelis in the Oslo accords,” he said.
The President said the Palestinian people want to achieve their rights and their state through peaceful means, which is through negotiations, “and we will not choose any way to achieve our rights other than negotiations. We always say that we extend our hand to the Israeli government chosen by the Israeli people to negotiate on these bases, which we did not invent but were put by the international organization.”
He also said that he told Israel that it either gives the Palestinians all their lawful money collected from tax revenues or none at all, but that it cannot deduct the amount it sees at its own whim.
“We are currently in a very serious financial situation after losing a large portion of our revenues, which amount to 70 percent of our budget. We had to pay half salary for the employees this month and maybe next month only 40 percent and in the end we may be forced not to pay anything,” he said, putting the blame for this on the Israeli government.
“We are truly suffering and in the next months, we do not know what will happen. Bur for sure there are going to be difficult days. We urge you to pass on this truth to your government, nothing more,” President Abbas concluded his statement to the visiting students.
