Azerbaijan, Baku, 21 May / corr. Trend R. Hafizoglu, E. Tariverdiyeva/ The resignation of the leader of the Palestinian Administration Mahmoud Abbas is less likely to have impact on the future status of the Israel-Palestinian peace talks which have not yielded results yet. "The resignation of Mahmoud Abbas will not affect 'peace talks'," Tahir al-Nunu, the spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry of Palestine said to Trend .
The President of the Palestinian Administration Mahmoud Abbas stated in the world economic forum in Egypt on 17 May that if Israel and Palestine do not reach peace for the upcoming 6 months, he will resign.
"There are no peace talks between Israel and Palestine, but attempts for it," Nunu, who is representing Hamas movement in the Palestinian government, said on a telephone from Gaza. According to the official representative of the Foreign Ministry, the viewpoint that the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas will affect Israeli-Palestine relations is lack of political education. "The consent of both parties who take part in the talks is important to hold peace talks. At the same time the parties should be sincere in their wish to restore peace," said Nunu.
According to Nunu, Israel continues construction of new settlements in the occupied territories in order to prevent peace talks from taking place and turns the process of the armed occupation into the cultural occupation.
"Everything told about the existence and continuation of the peace talks is a lie. It is wrong to discuss peace talks and their results until the occupation and the construction of new settlements for the Jews are not stopped," Nunu added.
According to Nunu, Abbas will not resign; simply he will hand over his post as his term is going to end.
The independent Palestinian political expert Jihad Saadi believes that the resignation of Mahud Abbas will not affect peace talks. "The peace talks have never been of great importance for the parties," Saadi said to Trend on a telephone from Kuwait.
According to Saadi, Israeli-Palestinian pace talks are being held only for the sake of protocol and have ever been for nought. " Israel still keeps the occupied land under the pretext of peace negotiations and that once more proves that the negotiations are fruitless," Saadi said.
Saaid said that if Abbas resigns, neither Israel nor Hamas will directly go for bilateral peace negotiations. Resignation of Abbas or someone else who will succeed him will not affect the sides' strategy and further activities. "The statement made by Abbas about his intention to resign is false. Abbas, whose term of office expires in six months, will have to pass his position," he said.
Saadi believes that Abbas's statement about resignation has no political importance.
According to Francis Boyle, College of Law at the University of Illinois, President Abbas is deeply disappointed that there have been no meaningful good faith negotiations for peace by Israel and no support for the same by the Bush administration.
"From the "Roadmap" through Annapolis to Sharm el Shaikh the world has witnessed nothing but a public relations charade by the Bush administration trying to deceive the Arab and Muslim world into believing that it wanted peace between Israel and Palestine when in fact all the Bush administration and the Israelis want is a Palestinian bantustan that they can then call a "state" - along the lines of what the criminal Afrikaner apartheid regime in South Africa tried to do to its Black people," Boyle said.
"That being said, President Abbas has threatened to resign before. My best estimate is that he will continue to serve his entire elected term in the hope and expectation that President Obama would take a more reasonable and principled approach to obtaining peace with justice for all in the Middle East," he said.
Israel was unavailable for interviewing during preparation of this article.
Mahmoud Abbas was elected the President of Palestine in 2003.
In 2005, Israel withdrew it troops from Gaza and the first stage of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks began.
In December, 2007, Annapolis hosted the next stage of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
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