Abbas to ask UN to grant Palestine full membership

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday told the Arab League that he is going to ask the UN to grant Palestine full membership, and call on international courts and organisations to protect Palestinians, Wafa news agency reported.

This came during a conference on Jerusalem held in Cairo and attended by several Arab leaders, including Egypt’s Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

In 2012, the PA was granted a non-member observer state status at the UN.

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Abbas said he would seek to have the UN reaffirm its commitment to a two-state solution as well as condemn Israel’s “unilateral measures,” including settlement construction.

“The State of Palestine will continue going to international courts and organisations to protect our people’s legitimate rights,” he said.

Abbas said it was a “religious duty as well as a humanitarian and national imperative” to support Palestinians living in the city of Jerusalem.

“The battle raging over Jerusalem did not only begin on the day of its occupation in 1967, but several decades prior to that, and even before the Balfour Declaration which was issued by the colonial powers, led by Britain and America,” he said.

The declaration, he reiterated, was aimed at “getting rid of the Jews in Europe and establishing the so-called Jewish national home in Palestine, to be an outpost to safeguard the interests of these colonial countries.”

He added: “Just as our people rejected the Balfour Declaration and its results, we also rejected all attempts to liquidate our cause or falsify the facts about it.”

“We rejected the ‘deal of the century,’ and we refused – and we still refuse – moving the US embassy or any other embassy to Jerusalem.”

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