Abbas Denies Jewish Connection To Israel In Speech To Palestinian Leadership

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas holds a press conference following the Extraordinary Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on the recent U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, on December 13, 2017, in Istanbul. Image by YASIN AKGUL/AFP/Getty Images

By JTA January 15, 2018

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denied a Jewish connection to Israel in a speech to the Palestinian leadership.

“Israel is a colonial project that has nothing to do with Jews,” Abbas said during a more than two-hour speech in Ramallah, to a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Council. The two-day meeting was held to formulate a response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Abbas alleged that once there was a state of Israel, its leaders could not convince Jews to immigrate to it. He also said that six million Jews preferred to be killed by the Nazis in Europe rather than leave for Israel.

During World War II British mandatory authorities prevented most Jewish immigration to Palestine.

He also alleged that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, only grudgingly worked to force Jews in Arab countries to come to Israel after he determined that he could not fill the country with European Jews.

Abbas slammed Trump and vowed to not participate in any negotiations under the auspices of the United States.

“We are here to stay. We will not leave our villages. This is our land. We will take instructions from no one. We stick by our people, our land. We say to Trump, we will not accept his deal. The deal of the century has become the slap in the face of the century,” Abbas said.

“Today is the day that the Oslo Accords end. Israel killed them,” Abbas said. “We are an authority without any authority, and an occupation without any cost. Trump threatens to cut funding to the authority because negotiations have failed. When the hell did negotiations start?!”

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin condemned Abbas remarks in a meeting Monday in Jerusalem with a delegation of AIPAC Board of Directors.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO