Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains a partner for peace, regardless of what he says about the Palestinians, but he was not taking the right road to peace, dpa reported.
"We heard statements from Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, who is our partner and who was elected by the people of Israel to be their prime minister," said Abbas, speaking during a tour of a factory in the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem.
"So when we talk about him, we talk about him as a partner."
Netanyahu said "the Palestinians should not take unilateral actions that would impede the negotiations," said Abbas. "He meant by this that we do not have the right to go to the United Nations to complain our situation. This is not allowed and he considers this unilateral action," he said.
Abbas said that the Palestinians have not yet gone to the UN, "but he (Netanyahu) criticizes us for taking a unilateral action after one month or two months or three or four, and we are not supposed to do that."
The Palestinians have said that if Israel does not stop settlement activities to allow the short-lived peace negotiations to resume, then one of the immediate option is to go to the UN and the Security Council to get a resolution recognizing the 1967 borders as the borders of the future Palestinian state.
Israel had threatened to also take unilateral actions in response in the West Bank such as annexing land where settlements were built.
Abbas said Israel has been taking unilateral actions for years and the construction of settlements in the West Bank is the best proof of that.
He said Netanyahu "knows that what he says is wrong and that if we want peace and to reach genuine peace, this is not the way to reach peace."