"Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday that Ramallah will seek the passage this week of a United Nations resolution granting ‘Palestine’ full membership at the international body, according to the official Palestinian Wafa news agency.
Speaking at an Arab League summit in Cairo, Abbas emphasized that the Palestinians remain committed to confronting the ‘racist’ and ‘extremist’ Israeli government, which he claimed was ‘ targeting Al-Aqsa Mosque and all our sanctities.’
‘The battle raging over Jerusalem did not only begin on the day of its occupation in 1967, but several decades prior to that, and even before the Balfour Declaration which was issued by the colonial powers, led by Britain and America. The declaration was aimed at getting rid of the Jews in Europe and establishing the so-called Jewish national home in Palestine, to be an outpost to safeguard the interests of these colonial countries,’ said the P.A. chief.
The 1917 Balfour Declaration spelled out London’s support for the establishment of a ‘Jewish national home’ in what was then British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. Signed by then-British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, the declaration is considered the historic precursor to Israel’s creation in 1948.
‘Supporting Jerusalem and strengthening the steadfastness of those staying there and in its environs is a religious duty and a humanitarian and national imperative,’ said Abbas.
‘Just as our people rejected the Balfour Declaration and its results, we also rejected all attempts to liquidate our cause or falsify the facts about it. We rejected [former U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace] deal of the century, and we refused— and we still refuse—to move the U.S. embassy or any other embassy to Jerusalem,’ he added.
The U.N. General Assembly in late December approved a resolution, at the behest of the P.A., calling on the International Court of Justice to ‘render urgently an advisory opinion’ on what it called Israel’s ‘prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory.’..."