UNITED NATIONS—President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority may use the global stage of the annual General Assembly here in a few weeks to publicly demand a date for ending Israel’s occupation, according to his ambassador, while expecting that the Israelis—and almost certainly their American allies—will oppose that demand.
“He wants the international community to agree on a date,” the ambassador, Riyad H. Mansour, said. Mr. Mansour called the demand part of what he described as a new strategy by Mr. Abbas to unilaterally advance the goal of Palestinian independence and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after a litany of frustrations, notably the collapse of American-brokered talks with Israel this year.
Mr. Abbas also is apparently hoping that the Palestinian Authority’s role in helping to halt the 50-day war in Gaza between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, achieved last Tuesday with an Egyptian brokered cease-fire agreement, has infused his position with new vitality and leverage.
If Mr. Abbas is denied an occupation end date, the ambassador said, Mr. Abbas will use the Palestine observer state status at the United Nations, an upgrade won nearly two years ago over Israeli and American objections, to make the occupied territories even more like the independent state he has sought.
The most coercive measure available to him is to make Palestine a member of the International Criminal Court, opening the way for possible prosecutions of Israeli actions as an occupying power.
Mr. Abbas has repeatedly hinted he would use that leverage, a prospect that has worried both Israel and the United States, Israel’s most important ally. Yet it also raises the possibility that Hamas, the dominant militant group in Gaza that Israel and much of the West regard as a terrorist organization, could also be vulnerable to prosecution. Though some Hamas officials have voiced support for joining the court, such a prospect could still create tensions with Mr. Abbas’s faction in the Palestinian leadership.
Mr. Abbas and his aides hinted at his revised strategy in recent days, even before the Gaza war was halted with the cease-fire agreement negotiated in Cairo. Mr. Mansour spoke more at length about it on Thursday in a briefing with a small group of reporters at the United Nations.
“We want a date for the end of occupation—that’s the new idea,” the ambassador said. Mr. Abbas, he said, “also knows that the Americans will not be receptive to this idea—it would be great if they are—but he is not going to give up on this idea and he’s said that ‘if not, then you will be forcing me to seek other options.’”
The ambassador said that Palestine could function like an independent state in many ways, “through joining all these agencies, through joining all these treaties, through joining all these conventions and conferences, and also seeking everything that is available to us on the legal front, including the I.C.C.”
The result, the ambassador said, is that “if you are refusing to acknowledge the fact as is, I am going to let this fact start creeping on you more and more until you wake up one moment and accept the reality.”
Israeli officials have historically opposed any unilateral attempt by Mr. Abbas to achieve Palestinian statehood. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel last week denied official Palestinian news agency reports that he and Mr. Abbas had agreed on the establishment of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders.
Speaking about Gaza, Mr. Mansour asserted that Israel had made significant concessions in the negotiations in Cairo that halted the conflict, notably dropping a demand for disarmament of the coastal enclave as a condition for the cease-fire. Precisely how the cease-fire is to be monitored and enforced is one of many issues to be addressed in further talks.
Mr. Mansour said the United Nations Security Council, where discussions over the Gaza conflict have been overshadowed by the crises in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere, should urgently adopt a resolution that strengthens the cease-fire agreement.
“It is in the business of international peace and security, and it has been engaged with this issue for 50 days, and yet it dragged its feet longer than it should have and it should have adopted a resolution a long time ago,” Mr. Mansour said.
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