Kaddoumi: Abbas is lying about his intention not to run for elections

Kaddoumi: Abbas is lying about his intention not to run for elections

Farouk Al-Kaddoumi, a senior Fatah leader, stated Saturday that Mahmoud Abbas is lying to the Palestinian people about his intention not to run for presidential elections, affirming that Abbas would participate in the elections at the end.

Kaddoumi told Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper that it was not the first time Abbas threatened to resign and then reversed his decision as he did when he was a premier.

He underlined that Abbas aims to pressure the American administration, the Europeans and the Israelis through such threat.

In the same context, the Palestinian People’s Party said that Abbas’s speech last Thursday was a confession of the death of peace negotiations with Israel, pointing out that the reason for that is the wrong negotiation option adopted by the Palestinian Authority (PA) since the Oslo agreement until now.

The People’s Party called on the PA to necessarily reconsider its policies that serve the Israeli occupation, make a general assessment of these policies and build a new national strategy.

For his part, Ramadan Shallah, the secretary-general of Islamic Jihad, said Friday during a ceremony held on the anniversary of the Movement’s establishment, that Abbas’s announcement that he would not run for the presidency in the upcoming elections was a clear confession that the peace process reached an impasse.

Shallah highlighted that resisting the occupation is a religious, national, humanitarian and moral duty and a necessity resorted to by the Palestinian people to face the Zionists who only understand the language of force and resistance.