Abbas: Palestinians are to stay on their land

President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday, that Palestinian people are adherent to their land, and will stay on it, on the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. In his speech read by Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations office at New York, Riyad Mansour, and read by Ibrahim Khraishi, Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations Office at Geneva, Abbas said, “The Palestinian state, will be, a multi and democratic state, where there will not be a religious or racial discrimination, a peaceful state that wants to live in security and peace side by side with Israel and the rest of the region’s countries.' Time has come for this state to gain independence after 64 years of occupation, he said. Abbas added that Palestine’s membership in the UN is a legal Palestinian right based on the partition plan issued on November 29, 1947, and is not a unilateral step. He demanded the recognition of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders in accordance with the UN resolutions, Madrid Conference, the Arab peace initiative and the Road Map. He said that recognizing Palestine is not an alternative for negotiations, but it helps re-launching them, that is in case the Israeli government has the intention to negotiate on the basis of the 1967 borders. He said, “It is not fair that Israel imposes sanctions on us because we gained UNESCO’s membership and it has no right to seize and confiscate tax and customs revenues that belong to the Palestinian people.” He added that in spite of the UN’s efforts to help Palestinians, which they appreciate, whether by UNRWA’s aid, or the different recommendations and decisions issued by the general assembly and the Security Council, Israel kept rejecting those decisions as if it is a state above the law.