Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’ address at United Nations General Assembly laid down the proverbial gauntlet when he issued a threat to backpedal on recognition of Israel, a staple provision of the 1993 Oslo Accords.
In a pre-recorded speech that aired on big screens during the 76th session, Abbas spewed a host of lies, including his claim that the PA has never “rejected even once a genuine and serious initiative to achieve peace,” and that somehow he is being prevented from holding the first elections in the Palestinian territories since 2006 because Arabs who identify as Palestinian living in Jerusalem would not be allowed to vote.
The truth of the matter behind these mendacious claims is that the Palestinian leadership has turned down a number of comprehensive peace agreements offered by Israel, including plans that would have seen the creation of an independent Palestinian state on almost all of the West Bank and the entirety of the Gaza Strip with the eastern part of Jerusalem as its capital.
In fact, Abbas has turned his back on almost every Israeli and American peace overture during his 15-plus-year tenure.
As for the elections, officials in Ramallah abruptly announced in April that the national legislative elections scheduled for the following month were canceled, despite the vote being announced just three months previously. Contrary to what Abbas said, the prospective exercise in democratic governance was seemingly prevented from going ahead because he and his Fatah acolytes knew they would almost certainly lose.
Abbas also described it as “regrettable that the policies of the international community and the decisions of the relevant United Nations bodies regarding a solution for the ‘Question of Palestine’ have until now not been upheld and implemented.”
For anyone familiar with the history of Israel, they will know that the UN Partition Plan, Resolution 181, which would have seen two separate Arab and Jewish states created, was accepted by the latter. However, the Arab side rejected the proposal and proceeded to launch an all-out war.
Most media outlets that reported on Abbas’ speech fell into the trap of parroting his falsehoods.
In an article titled, Frustrated Abbas gives Israel ultimatum in harsh UN address, The Associated Press states:
Abbas spoke against a backdrop showing the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, a flashpoint holy site sacred to Muslims and Jews, and a series of maps of the region showing Israel’s territorial expansion over several decades of war and conflict.”
On closer inspection of the maps that the AP claims depict “Israel’s territorial expansion” it is clear they are in fact a series of widely shared and highly misleading illustrations, as HonestReporting has previously demonstrated.
These debunked maps are a part of a wider propaganda campaign that seeks to delegitimize Israel and bolster fantastical claims about a historical Palestinian state, which is precisely why Abbas chose to show them in the backdrop of a speech that he knew would be disseminated by the international media.
However, the maps hanging on the wall were not the only one of Abbas’ lies that have been uncritically published.
Before launching into a tirade in which he accused the Jewish state of committing “massacres” and of being a “colonial” enterprise, Abbas suggested he was speaking on the 54-year anniversary of Israel’s “military occupation” of Palestinian territory, including the Gaza Strip.
Of course, a quick Google search would tell any journalist that there is no such military presence in Gaza after Israel “disengaged” from the coastal enclave in 2005. At present, the Palestinian territory is ruled by the US-designated terrorist group Hamas.
This salient fact did not stop SABC News, a channel owned by the partially taxpayer-funded South African Broadcasting Corporation, from regurgitating this disinformation in a story published on September 27:
His [Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s] speech followed that of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday in which he accused Israel of destroying the two-state solution and threatened to withdraw Palestinian’s recognition of Israel if it does not withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem in one year.”
It is a shame that some news organizations did not care to dissect the many lies of Abbas’ address because neglecting to do so simply adds credence to them.
