Bloomberg News reports senior Palestinian official Nabil Shaath saying: We will ask U.N. Security Council to take control of peace efforts. “We will confront Israel politically all over the universe” if it doesn’t pull back to the 1967 borders, Shaath said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wants the U.N. to take over from the U.S. as the main peace broker between Israel and the Palestinians, senior Abbas adviser Nabil Shaath told Bloomberg News in an interview published on Tuesday.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas and senior adviser Nabil Shaath – Photo: AP

“We are telling the U.S., your plan has not worked out,” Shaath said. “We insist that the international community looks into another plan.”

“People are totally disillusioned and disappointed about the peace process and the chaperoning by America of this peace process,” Shaath said. “It has not produced anything.”

Shaath said Abbas, who will address the U.N. General Assembly later this month, will ask the Security Council to “intervene and take control” of Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

According to Shaath, Abbas will try to “shame” Israel into pulling out of the West Bank and east Jerusalem. If Israel doesn’t do so, “we will confront Israel politically all over the universe,” Shaath said. “We are going to ask the world to treat Israel as it did apartheid South Africa.”

Last week, a Palestinian delegation that included chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and intelligence chief Majid Faraj visited Washington for a series of meetings with American officials.

Senior Palestinian officials recently told Arab media outlets that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has talked with Abbas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the possibility of renewing peace talks, which were frozen earlier this year after Abbas formed a unity government with Hamas. Kerry reportedly told Netanyahu that the resumption of negotiations would require Israel to carry out the fourth stage of the Palestinian prisoner release, which was canceled when the talks broke down.

Meanwhile, Arab media outlets have reported that Egypt and other Arab nations, including Jordan and Saudi Arabia, back the Palestinian demand that the Security Council set a deadline for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. Abbas met in Cairo with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi last weekend and Sissi reportedly expressed support for Abbas’ diplomatic plan. Under the plan, the Security Council would set a three-year deadline for Israel to pull back to the 1967 borders, enabling the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

View original Israel Hayom publication at: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=19989