Political Quotes

“I am very pleased to join with so many Members of the House to express our profound concern, and strenuous opposition, to the impending request by the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to seek a unilateral declaration of statehood at the United Nations later this week. The Palestinian leadership says it wants peace with Israel, but their actions and words contradict their assertions. It is not at all clear President Abbas is even capable of making peace with Israel. He refused to enter direct negotiations last year even when Israel agreed to a settlement freeze. He refuses to accept a simple statement that he accepts Israel as a Jewish state. And, as a prelude to his bid for statehood from the United Nations, he wrote in the New York Times last May: ``Palestine's admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one.'' Recognition of statehood by the United Nations, in other words, is simply another front in the conflict--and not a settlement of the conflict. Any move towards statehood for Palestine in the United Nations is gravely flawed. First, a unilateral declaration of statehood, by the Palestinians themselves or through the United Nations, constitutes a unilateral repudiation of the peace process. A Palestinian state can only emerge at the conclusion of a peace treaty with Israel.…”