By AMY TEIBEL | AP ARAB NEWS
JERUSALEM: The Palestinian president, in a remarkable assessment delivered on Israeli TV, has said the Arab world erred in rejecting the United Nations’ 1947 plan to partition Palestine into a Palestinian and a Jewish state.
The Palestinian and Arab refusal to accept a UN plan to partition the then-British-controlled mandate of Palestine sparked widespread fighting, then Arab military intervention after Israel declared independence the following year. The Arabs lost the war.
“It was our mistake. It was an Arab mistake as a whole,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Channel 2 TV in a rare interview to the Israeli media on Friday. “But do they (the Israelis) punish us for this mistake 64 years?”
Abbas also addressed his negotiations with former Israeli leader Ehud Olmert, now in the spotlight because of the publication of the memoirs of former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Rice backs Israel’s account that Olmert made a peace offer that was rejected, while Palestinians say that talks never actually reached a point where a firm offer was on the table.
Abbas claimed that he and Olmert were “very close” to reaching a peace agreement in 2008, before the Israeli leader left office under the cloud of corruption allegations.
“It was a very good opportunity,” he said. “If he stayed two, three months, I believe in that time we could have concluded an agreement.”
Well, if the Palestinians would have listened to the advice of the Khalifa of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community at the time they would not have left the territory of what has become Israel and their situation would be totally different now. Let every one take a lesson at least from now on!!!!!! (Palestinian members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community remained in Palestine and have now their headquarters at Kababir, near Haifa, in what is now the territory of Israel).