US-Palestine: Biden snubbed meeting with Abbas at UN, says report
US President Joe Biden reportedly rejected a request from Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last week, Axios reported.
Citing US and Palestinian sources, Axios reported on Wednesday that Abbas and his aides inquired about the prospect of a meeting with Biden when considering whether to attend the annual gathering.
According to the report, the Palestinians were told by the White House that Biden would not hold any bilateral meetings while in New York and was also unavailable to meet in Washington.
This decision reportedly contributed to Abbas' decision not to address the General Assembly in person and instead speak remotely by video.
The White House did not comment on the report, which noted Biden held several bilateral meetings during his brief stay in New York.
In his address to the UN last week, Biden said the two-state solution was the only way to solve the issue. However, during his speech, he noted that "we are a long way from that goal at this moment".
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who presides over a fragile coalition government, has ruled out the creation of a Palestinian state and said his administration would continue expanding existing illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.
The far-right leader omitted the Palestinians altogether in his address to the UN on Monday, instead focusing nearly the entirety of his speech on regional rival Iran.
Bennett's fierce assault on Iran was reminiscent of the UN speeches made by Netanyahu, albeit without the props and visual aids.
'World will not tolerate such a situation'
Meanwhile, in his video address, Abbas said "current and former" Israeli governments had persisted in evading the two-state solution and suggested he could reverse recognition of the 1967 borders with Israel if it did not withdraw from East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Gaza within the next year.
"If the Israeli occupation authorities continue to entrench the reality of one apartheid state as is happening today, our Palestinian people and the entire world will not tolerate such a situation," Abbas said.
"Circumstances on the ground will inevitably impose equal and full political rights for all on the land of historical Palestine, within one state. In all cases, Israel has to choose."
Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 and considers all of the city as its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a state they seek to establish in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
While some Palestinians and Israelis support the idea of a single binational state, most have very different ideas of what that entity would look like and how it would be governed.
Most analysts contend a single state would not be viable, for religious, political and demographic reasons.
Talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians collapsed in 2014 and worsened following former US President Donald Trump's so-called "deal of the century" plan for the Middle East that saw a number of Arab countries reach normalisation agreements with Israel.
During his election campaign in 2020, Biden said he would keep the US embassy in Jerusalem, which was moved from Tel Aviv during Trump tenure in 2018, and reopen the US consulate in Jerusalem to provide diplomatic outreach to the Palestinians.
The consulate, which has been closed since 2019, served hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who reside in Jerusalem, but also Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza who required US consular services.
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