Abbas Accuses Israel of Apartheid Policies Over Jewish State Bill

Palestinian Authority leader asks meeting of Arab leaders for support in getting a UN resolution to end the Israeli occupation.
Palestinian inspect the home of Palestinian Ziad Awad in the town of Idna,13 kilometers (8 miles) west of the West Bank city of Hebron, Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has said that Palestinians will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and accused Israel of following policies of apartheid against its Palestinian population.
“We will never recognize the Jewishness of the state of Israel,” Abbas said at an Arab League meeting in Cairo on Saturday, the Times of Israel reports.

Last week the Israeli cabinet approved controversial draft legislation defining Israel as a Jewish state, a proposal which will now be subject to a vote in parliament. Opponents, who include Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, believe that the law is unnecessary and damaging to already tense relations with Palestinians. The legislation “goes against a Jewish and democratic Israel,” Livni told the Times last week, and threatened to break up the coalition government over the issue.

The proposed bill is called “Israel, the Nation-State of the Jewish People,” and is intended to institutionalize Israel’s Jewish character, Jewish law as a basis for legislation, and in some draft forms seeks to remove Arabic’s status as an official language. According to the Jerusalem Post, Abbas on Saturday accused Israel of working toward “consolidating Apartheid through a number of laws.”

A group of female Israeli activists launched a peace campaign with a train ride to the Israeli town of Sderot, close to the Gaza border, to heighten awareness of an immediate need for a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, Haaretz reported Wednesday.

"The status quo is not sustainable any longer, especially at a time when the Israeli government is continuing its attacks, its settlements, demolishing houses, confiscating lands and imposing facts on the ground," the AP quotes Abbas said to Arab foreign ministers at the meeting.
According to the AP, the ministers at Saturday’s meeting agreed to back Abbas’ request for a UN Security Council Resolution, which proposes to set a November 2016 deadline for Israeli withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders.

Arab League Chief Nabil Elaraby responded, “This is a basic issue, this is a very important issue, and the Arab League agrees with it.” The Palestinian Authority president told the meeting he had previously, after US requests, postponed such step, but said that the Palestinians now could not wait any longer