Palestinian UN draft: Neyanyahu slams Abbas

Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Thursday over the Palestinian-proposed UN draft resolution which calls for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories by the end of 2017.

"Abu Mazen (Abbas) thinks he can threaten us with unilateral moves," Netanyahu said during a Chanukah holiday event for his office's employees.

"He does not understand that they will result in a Hamas takeover in Judea and Samaria (the Jewish biblical names for the West Bank,) as previously occurred in Gaza. We will not let this happen," he stressed, referring to the Hamas takeover of the tiny Gaza Strip in 2007, Xinhua reported.

Jordan submitted a Palestinian-proposed draft resolution to the UN Security Council Wednesday night, which calls for a peace deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within one year and an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories by the end of 2017.

In a statement issued earlier Thursday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman described the Palestinian UN bid as an "act of aggression".

"Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is adopting measures whose sole aim is to attack Israel, with no benefit to the Palestinians. On the contrary, they can only further exacerbate the conflict and worsen the situation, and will not advance any solution, because without Israel's agreement nothing will change," Lieberman said.

The latest Palestinian UN statehood bid is one of the diplomatic initiatives launched by the Palestinian National Authority since the renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed in April after nine months of US-mediated negotiations.

At the request of the Palestinians, Switzerland convened a conference of the Geneva Convention signatories Wednesday. The meeting adopted a declaration urging Israel to abide by humanitarian laws in war zones and occupied territories and calling for investigations of possible violations of these laws by Israel.

The European Union Court decided Wednesday to temporarily remove Hamas from its blacklist of terrorist organisations.

Furthermore, the European parliament voted in favour of recognising "in principle" the Palestinians' right for a state and called for achieving this goal through negotiations with Israel.

Parliaments in several European countries, including Britain, Spain, Ireland and France, have already voted for the recognition of a Palestinian state in symbolic moves in recent weeks.

The Swedish government has gone even further, officially recognising Palestine as a state.