A lawmaker said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' call for an international conference to be held this year to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks would "get nowhere" and only send the message to Israel that it can carry on building its illegal settlements without any consequences.
Akbar Torki told ICANA on Friday that "the Israeli regime is continuing its settlement construction and keeps claiming it wants to negotiate—which are totally contradictory."
Abbas on Tuesday called for an international conference to be held later this year to launch a new, wider Middle East peace process that could pave the way to Palestinian statehood.
In a rare address to the UN Security Council, he presented a plan to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks under a new international peace process that would replace the US-led mediation with a group of international regional players and five permanent Security Council members.
Torki lambasted Abbas for his proposal, asking "how can be negotiations while Beit-ul-Moqaddas has been recognized [by the US] as the Israeli regime's capital. Such negotiations would bear no results whatsoever."
US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Beit-ul-Moqaddas as Israel's capital last December has been globally condemned. In December, the UN General Assembly voted 128-9, with 35 abstentions, to reject the US decision on Beit-ul-Moqaddas.
That vote in the 193-nation assembly came after 14 of the 15 council members voted in favor of a similar measure. The United States vetoed that draft resolution.
Torki said the Palestinian cause had been able to make headway when "resistance and revolutionary elements" were at the helm in the past 40 years.
"Those who propose negotiations are ignoring the Palestinian martyrs' families. These people are not revolutionaries and are trampling the rights of Palestinians." The parliamentarian said.
Iran does not recognize the Israeli entity and has suggested holding a free referendum in which all Palestinians—including the refugees, Jews, and Christians—can partake as the only way out of the decades-old issue.
The logical idea has been rejected by the US and Israel and has been widely underreported in the mainstream western media, which ironically portray the 40-year-old Islamic Revolution of Iran and resistance groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah as the stumbling blocks in the way of finding a resolution to the Palestinian issue, ignoring more than 70 years of Israeli killings and lawlessness.
