[caption id="attachment_104068" align="alignright" width="167"] Israel’s Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz[/caption]
The Israeli intelligence minister describes as an “act of war” a Palestinian draft submitted to the UN Security Council to end Israeli occupation by the end of 2017.
“The Palestinians made sure to remove any mention of Israel’s status as a Jewish state from the draft, which means this is not an act of peace, it’s an act of war,” Israel Radio quoted Yuval Steinitz as saying on Thursday.

The draft was presented to the UN by Jordan, said Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour at a press conference on Wednesday.

“We need to consider every move including cutting off economic ties with” the Palestinian Authority, Steinitz said.

“If the PA continues to incite against us, against our existence, against the Jewish nation, if it [continues to] take unilateral action, we need to respond not just in the international sphere but also in the Palestinian sphere and to consider, if there is no other choice, dismantling the [Palestinian] Authority,” he added.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman also said in a statement that the resolution will be of no avail for the Palestinians.

“[Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas is undertaking actions with the sole purpose of taunting Israel. They serve no real purpose for the Palestinian people. On the contrary, these actions will only worsen the conflict and will not advance a peace deal because without Israel’s agreement, nothing will change [on the ground],” he said in a statement.

He further described as “gimmicks” the Palestinian draft, urging the UNSC to consider more pressing issues in the world.

“The Security Council is better served dealing with issues of true importance in the world, like how to handle the deadly terror we saw this week in Australia and Pakistan. Or the Syrian civil war, or Libya, and not waste its time on Palestinian gimmicks,” he added.

The Arab-backed draft initially set a deadline of November 2016 for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, but France pushed for a softer resolution.

Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, East al-Quds (Jerusalem), and the besieged Gaza Strip and are demanding that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories.

Tel Aviv, however, has refused to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to discuss the issue of al-Quds.

By Press TV

 

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