Congress applause of Netanyahu 'pathetic'

Published yesterday (updated) 25/05/2011 17:46

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) --

The warm reception of the Israeli prime Minister at the US Congress was "pathetic," President Abbas' secretary-general Al-Tayyib Abdul Rahim said Wednesday.

Benjamin Netanyahu entered Congress to applause the day before, and received more than 25 standing ovations during a speech in which he ruled out international demands to return to the 1967 borders or share Jerusalem, and called on Mahmoud Abbas to "tear up" the reconciliation agreement his Fat'h party signed two weeks ago with rival faction Hamas.

"We felt as we watched the reception that we were watching a totalitarian parliament," Abdul-Rahim said.

The US lawmakers' reaction to Netanyahu gave the impression that the body wholly supported the Israeli premier's rejection of Obama's plan for a just peace in the region, the presidential official said.

Abdul-Rahim added that the welcome offended the American people more than anybody else.

"I believe if George Washington or Abraham Lincoln rose from the dead, they wouldn’t have received that warm welcome. This can only bolster the extremist right wing in Israel and support their efforts to blow up the peace process," he said.

The official described Palestinians as having already given up on US Congress, saying "but we did not expect such a caricatured and pathetic image."

He said that Netanyahu’s speech before Congress had destroyed all hopes to achieve peace, and lamented that in spite of this he was received with standing ovations and applause.

Palestinian members of Israeli Parliament say Netanyahu speech 'misleading'

 [ 25/05/2011 - 09:46 PM ]

JERUSALEM, (PIC)--

The Palestinian Arab members of the Israeli legislative body, the Knesset, have said that the speech Netanyahu gave in front of US Congress on Tuesday was an attempt at deception.

Netanyahu promoted the idea that the Arabs in Israel share enjoy full democratic rights.

The statement comes at a moment when Netanyahu has led his people in the ugliest form of racism, said Knesset member Mohammed Baraka, who heads the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality.

”Israel is the only country in the world that applies two systems, one which grants precedence to Jews, and another that practices racial discrimination against Palestinians in the 1948-occupied territories,” Baraka said.

He went on to say that those who engage in “occupation, repression, torture, and denial of human and national rights against an entire people for more than sixty years cannot speak about democracy.”

“After the false presentation Netanyahu made last night, some congressmen may have had the misconception that we live in prosperous Switzerland, and not in a neglected city,” added MK Ahmed al-Tibi.

He pointed out that there are forty laws in Israel that discriminate against Arab citizens, who have enjoyed in Israel a ”distorted and incomplete citizenship and live under threat of expulsion and exclusion”.

Hamas denounces Netanyahu speech to US Congress

[ 25/05/2011 - 12:51 PM ]

DAMASCUS, (PIC)--

Hamas has strongly condemned the speech of the Israeli Prime Minister before the US Congress on Tuesday, saying that it was ”full of fraudulence and denial of facts and history, and it revealed the racism, arrogance, and extremism of the Israelis against the Palestinians”.

”The address did not contain any new political content, but it only confirmed the Zionist occupation vision by declaring its commitment to make Jerusalem a capital of [Israel] and rejecting the right of return and withdrawal from Arab lands occupied in 1967,” a Hamas official has stated.

The declaration implies continued occupation, aggression, and denial of national rights of the Palestinian people, the statement says.

”We in Hamas confirm our rejection of the Israeli-American interventions in Palestinian internal affairs through their rejection of the national reconciliation, which confirms our commitment with our brothers in Fatah and all Palestinian factions to protect our people and national rights.”

In the statement, Hamas called on Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee to reconsider resuming the failed negotiations with Israel. The movement also reiterated calls to develop a new strategy based on support of all means of Palestinian resistance in the face of the Israeli occupation.