Abbas: Investigation into Arafat death "made good progress"

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that the investigation into the death of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has "made good progress."

Abbas said during a festival commemorating the 12th anniversary of the passing of Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah that "the investigation into the martyrdom of Brother Abu Ammar (Arafat) is still ongoing and the Palestinian investigation committee is still working with the case, and we have made good progress in approaching the truth."

He added "when this committee reaches its conclusions, they will be presented to the people in the soonest chance."

"We will continue to look for who did it, and if you ask me, I know, but my testimony is not enough, and the investigation committee shall continue and prove the motives and in the soonest chance, the conclusions will be announced and you will be surprised by the perpetrators," continued Abbas.

Arafat died in Nov. 11, 2004, aged 75, in a hospital in France due to an unknown illness, amidst Palestinian accusations that Israel poisoned him.

Israel denies the accusations. Arafat is the former president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) since 1969 and the first president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) since its establishment in accordance with the interim Oslo Accords in 1993.

President Abbas also said that the year 2017 "is the year to end the Israeli occupation with all the tools available," vowing not to make any concessions on the Palestinian national standards, until the end of his life.

"We have called for holding an international peace conference and France, thankfully, took the initiative towards adopting this idea that we hope to hold the conference before the end of the year," said Abbas.

He mentioned that the conference will, hopefully, "put a timeframe to end the occupation and find working and monitoring mechanisms to overlook what has been agreed upon in order to enable our people to live in freedom and dignity."

Peace talks between Israel and Palestine have been stalled since April 2014 after the U.S.-sponsored nine-month-long talks achieved no tangible results.