President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday that the current Israeli government had no vision for an end to the occupation.
Addressing Palestinians released from Israeli detention, at his Ramallah headquarters, the president said Israel continued to shut down all avenues to peace.
Abbas said the US administration pledged that negotiations launched in September would establish a Palestinian state within a year. He asked how long the international community would watch a population live under occupation if an agreement wasn't reached.
"We would be fooling ourselves to say that we are independent when there is a wall, checkpoints, arrests, killings and destruction around us," he said.
Regarding the uprisings across the Arab world, which led to the toppling of longtime leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, Abbas said Palestinians would not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. However, he praised the determination of the Egyptian and Tunisian people, and thanked them for their support of Palestinians.
He assured the former prisoners that the plight of Palestinians detained by Israel was a priority of the Palestinan Authority.
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