PLO: Israel Marginalizes PM Mahmud Abbas’ Govt

PLO: Israel Launching an All-out War to Marginalize PM Mahmud Abbas’ Government

The Palestinian leadership on Friday held the Israeli government of PM Ariel Sharon responsible for the collapse of the Hudna (temporary ceasefire) declared by Palestinian anti-occupation factions on June 29 and said Israel has launched an all-out war against the Palestinian people and the Palestine National Authority (PNA), with the aim of marginalizing the PNA government of PM Mahmud Abbas in order to avoid implementing the “roadmap” peace plan.

“The Israeli government considered the success of the Palestinian government in achieving the Hudna, improving internal relations as well as restoring international relations” as a political “risk” threatening its plans and a “pressuring factor, which embarrasses its policy that seeks to obstruct the implementation of the roadmap,” the leadership said in a statement released by the official news agency WAFA.

The meeting of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), chaired by President Yasser Arafat and attended also by the representatives of the PLO member factions, discussed the deteriorating conditions on the ground in the occupied Palestinian territories due to the criminal aggressions and the expanding operations of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in all Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“One goal of this (Israeli) all-out war has become clear: To prevent the PNA from carrying out its duties in full, to paralyze and marginalize the role of the Palestinian government, to portray it as incapable of doing anything, and consequently to question its national and international standing,” the leadership said following its meeting in President Arafat’s battered headquarters in Ramallah.

Reconfirming its decisions on Wednesday to establish the PLO’s sole decision-making authority, to back PM Abass’ measures to enforce respect to law and public order and to end violations thereof, “including the disciplined use of arms, the removal of all armed phenomena,” the PLO leadership urged the US Administration and the Quartet of EU, US, UN and Russia who drafted and adopted the Middle East roadmap peace plan “to urgently intervene more effectively to stop the Israeli all-out war, withdraw the occupation forces, and lift the military siege (imposed by the IOF on Palestinian Territory).”

“This is the basic mission at these moments, to make possible the prevention of total deterioration and to enable the PNA implement its obligations stipulated in the roadmap, provided Israel also implements its obligations without preconditions and various pretexts not to,” the PLO statement said.

In view of “past experience,” the PLO deemed that “necessity dictates now, under the threat of an all-out war against the Palestinian people, to quickly send international monitors with effective powers to supervise the enforcement of the truce, and reinforce it with the implementation of the various aspects of the roadmap,” the statement added.

“For the truce to be established, there is a need to start a serious political process, and to solve the various outstanding issues, in the forefront of which are: a stop to settlement (activity), construction of the (Israeli Apartheid) Segregation Wall, and the Israeli withdrawal to pre-28 September 2000 lines,” the PLO executives stressed.

The PLO warned that “the coming hours and days will determine the fate of the entire peace process, and the future regional status quo,” the statement said.

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