Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Abbas Pressured to Quit over Report, Threatened with a Video Tape?!


Al-Manar

"06/10/2009 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is facing unusually harsh criticism from within Fatah and other Palestinian groups for his decision last week to withdraw a draft document requesting the United Nations Human Rights Council pursue the adoption of the Goldstone report which could have led to the prosecution of Israel for war crimes during its aggression in Gaza.

Senior Hamas member Mahmoud al-Zahar has demanded that the Palestinian president resign for supporting the postponement of the UN vote. Al-Zahar told Al Jazeera that Abbas was guilty of "a very big crime against the Palestinian people".......

Hundreds of people in the West Bank city of Ramallah protested against the Palestinian Authority's decision to support a delay to a UN vote on whether to endorse the findings of the report......

Thirty-two Palestinian groups in Europe also called on Abbas to immediately step down from office. In a statement, the groups said "the step to delay the endorsement was not less dangerous than the atrocities committed by the Israeli occupation in Gaza"......

Hamas, which has de facto control of Gaza and is the main political rival to Abbas's Fatah faction, has appeared to rule out reconciliation under the present circumstances. Egypt has invited Hamas and Fatah to Cairo for negotiations on October 26 towards the formation of a national unity government, but al-Zahar said that the PA's position on the Goldstone report made such a meeting futile.......

“A VIDEO CAUSED REPORT’S WITHDRAWAL”

The Palestinian Shahab agency quoted well-informed US sources as saying that a video was behind the Palestinian Authority's decision to withdraw support for Goldstone report. The agency said that a meeting was held in Washington in recent days between the representatives of the Palestinian Authority and Israeli delegation on the Gaza report. The sources pointed out that the PA representatives strongly rejected the Israeli request to defer the report and insisted on their position, until the Israeli Colonel Eli Avraham presented a video file displaying a dialogue which took place between Abbas and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in the presence of the former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni........

Israeli Maariv newspaper had previously quoted the Israeli occupation Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi as saying that the Palestinian Authority represented by its president, went to war with Israel in Gaza........."

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