Abbas says new Israeli gov’t won’t seek peace

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose name was absent from Israeli discourse during the campaign just as it was in the 2013 elections, says that “if Netanyahu’s comments are true, it means there is no serious intention in the Israeli government to reach a diplomatic solution that will lead to two states based on the pre-1967 lines.”

Abbas was referring to Netanyahu’s about-face regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state. The prime minister said on Tuesday no such state will be established under his watch, seemingly backtracking on his comments from his Bar-Ilan University speech of 2009.

With negotiations being in a state of deep freeze for several months now, the comments from the Palestinian Authority president did not seem to resonate very loudly among Israeli politicians.