Mahmoud Abbas Quotes
It is high time that the Palestinian people restore their freedom and independence. It is high time that the decades, the long decades of suffering and pain would stop.
Abbas, Mahmoud. "Statement by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Sharm El-Sheikh Summit." 8 Feb. 2005, Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
He was a Quebec separatist and advocated a separate country.
A minority of Jewish Israelis do not recognize the United Nations 1949 partition boundaries of the land creating modern Israel. They believe that God gave all the land to the Jewish people—as described in the Bible. Therefore, to them, the West Bank is a part of Israel. No Israeli government has ever maintained that position. However some governments which depend on settler and ultra-Orthodox support do not publicly disavow the position. Palestinians, look with alarm, on this view and the constant attempts at encroachment on West Bank land that the settlers attempt. Like the extremist Palestinians who want to sabotage any two-state solution, there is a minority of Israelis who do the same. These two groups made the peace process very difficult as their adherents are not only very passionate about their views, but have political influence out of proportion to their relatively small number of voters.
Nguyen Ai Quoc was early pseudonym. At the Versailles WWI Peace Conference a young, 29 year old, Ho Chi Minh showed up and tried to present his petition for Vietnamese independence to Woodrow Wilson and the other non-French leaders. (Indochina was then a French colony.) Little attention was paid to him and his petition. Even though Wilson was for national self determination, all the other major WWI Allies had overseas colonial empires. After suffering losses from German aggression they were interested in getting those back plus reparations—not ceding away any of their then existing territory. They paid little attention to Wilson on the self determination issue and the Senate would not support Wilson on the League of Nations which then might have pressed for self determination. Ho was snubbed. It was a costly, unjust snub for the world.
This statement hardened the Israeli population away from anything that would bring Hamas more power. The PLO leader had, for ALL the Palestinian people, recognized the right of Israel to exist {633062}. Now Hamas was not only reneging on the Arafat declaration, but also would not even use the term “Israel” and instead calls the nation which in less time than the Palestinians have had, has developed a modern, industrial, democratic state far in advance of the Palestinians or any of the Arab nations for that matter. Yet it is relegated to a “project” with the great hope of having it come to an end—the destruction of Israel. The Israelis observe that this is a de facto declaration of war, and hence treat Gaza and Hamas as an enemy force to be reckoned with. See {635338} for another alarming reneging of the recognition of Israel.
Mahmoud Abbas, also known by the kunya Abu Mazen (Arabic: أَبُو مَازِن, ʾAbū Māzin), is the president of the State of Palestine and Palestinian National Authority. He has been the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) since 11 November 2004, and Palestinian president since 15 January 2005 (Palestinian National Authority since 15 January 2005, and State of Palestine since 8 May 2005). Abbas is a member of the Fatah party and was elected chairman of Fatah in 2009.
