The Palestinian press has been saying for weeks that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas would “drop a bombshell” when he spoke to the United National General Assembly today. In the event, the bomb did not go off. The speech was mostly a rehash of tired complaints about Israel, some of them linked to reality (occupation is never popular) and others entirely manufactured and irresponsible.
Abbas’s low point came right at the beginning of the speech, when he accused Israel of various crimes defiling the Temple Mount. He said Israel is trying “to impose its plans to undermine the Islamic and Christian sanctuaries in Jerusalem, particularly its actions at Al-Aqsa Mosque.” This is a lie, and given the violence around the Temple Mount in recent weeks it is the kind of lie that can create injuries and loss of life.
Abbas continues to say that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are swallowing it up, which is simply false: the settlements are growing in population but not expanding territorially. As to Gaza, he said Israel “continues its blockade of the Gaza Strip.” But his listeners surely know that it is Egypt that is maintaining a strict blockade, while Israel supplies the vast bulk of food, water, and electricity to Gaza. Abbas’s claim that the PA is “working on spreading the culture of peace and coexistence” is remarkable in view of the repeated glorification of terrorist murderers in school books and the naming of parks and schools after them. A moment of humor, unintentional to be sure, arrived when Abbas said “we seek to hold presidential and legislative elections.” Elected in 2005, he is now in the eleventh year of his own four year term and has shown zero desire to submit himself to the polls again.