jpost.com
Officials instruct Palestinians to hold anti-Obama demonstrations in the West Bank; PA official jokes: “Obama has obviously joined the Zionist movement.”
US President Barack Obama will be held responsible for the failure of the Middle East peace process, members of the Palestinian Authority delegation to the UN General Assembly meeting in New York charged on Thursday.
The latest allegation came as the PA called for anti-Obama demonstrations in protest against his opposition to the Palestinian statehood bid.
The officials said that relations between the PA and the US were now “at their lowest” because of Obama’s opposition to PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s plan to submit a request for full membership of a Palestinian state to the UN Security Council on Friday.
Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said that despite the US opposition, Abbas was “determined” to submit the application to the UN on Friday.
Until Obama delivered his speech at the UN on Wednesday, Abbas and his aides were still hoping that the US Administration would change its position regarding the statehood bid.
But Obama’s speech, which some PA officials described as “pro-Israel” and “biased,” came as a shock to Abbas, according to one of his aides.
“President Abbas didn’t expect Obama to fully endorse the policies of the Israeli government,” the aide told The Jerusalem Post. “We can even say that President Abbas was very angry and disappointed by the speech.”
Abbas’s disappointment grew even more when he met late Wednesday with Obama on the sidelines of the UN convention, only to hear once again from the US president, a clear threat to use the veto to foil the statehood bid on Friday.
Following the tense meeting, a PA official joked: “Obama has obviously joined the Zionist movement.”
MK Ahmed Tibi, who is accompanying the PA delegation, condemned Obama’s position as “immoral.” Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO official, accused the US Administration of applying “double standards” in dealing with the Israeli-Arab conflict.
In response to Obama’s speech, the PA leadership instructed Palestinians in the West Bank to stage demonstrations on Thursday to denounce the US president and his policies.
PA civil servants and school children were ordered to hold rallies and demonstrations “in solidarity with President Abbas and to condemn Obama’s bias in favor of Israel.”
Bassam Abu Sharif, a former advisor to Yasser Arafat, called for a non-violent “intifada” against Obama, who he accused of being supportive of the “Israeli expansionist project in Palestine.”
Tawfik Tirawi, a former PA security commander in the West Bank, said that when he listened to Obama on Wednesday, he thought he was listening to a speech by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
“President Obama has broken all the promises he made in the past,” Tirawi, member of the Fatah Central Committee, charged. “Obama’s policies are in violation of the values and principles for which the US stands – liberty and democracy.”
Fatah spokesman Osama Qawassmeh accused Obama of “forging history” by serving as an advocate for Israel.
Qawassmeh accused Obama of depicting Israel as the victim “in contradiction with moral values and democracy of the American people.”
Middle East atemporal 
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