Ahead of UN speech, Palestinian leader eschews direct talks

In a harshly worded essay ahead of his Wednesday address to the United Nations, the Palestinian president says a new “multilateral” approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is needed since direct negotiations with Israel have repeatedly failed.

 

Mahmoud Abbas says the model should be based instead on the type of negotiations that took place in the Balkans, Libya and Iran. Several rounds of past negotiations have been unable to reach a peace accord and Abbas shunned renewing them.

 

“The peace process must be multilateral. The same pattern of negotiations imposed for years will not work because Israel is the occupying power,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Huffington Post. “We cannot directly negotiate with a power that has this level of control and exhibits such contempt for the rights and existence of our people.”

 

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