Mahmoud Abbas, President of Palestine, delivered a recorded speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Friday evening, during the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

In his speech, he gave the Israeli occupation one year to withdraw from the West Bank, otherwise he said that he “will not recognize it.”

“[Israeli Occupation] is trying to expel the Palestinian people in Jerusalem from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods,” Abbas said. “The crimes of the occupation will not stop our people's struggle and quest for their independence, and we will not allow the occupation to seize our ambitions.”

“The policies of the international community and the United Nations have failed because they have not been able to hold [Israeli Occupation] accountable for its violations, and it is behaving as a state above the law,” he added.

President Abbas said that some countries do not do not acknowledge that Israeli Occupation is an occupying and apartheid state, and “they brag that they share common values with [Israeli Occupation], what values are they talking about!”

He refused the double standard they are treated with such as when some ask the Palestinians to change and modify their educational curricula but do not ask the same thing from Israeli Occupation.

“We affirm that the PLO is the only representative of the Palestinian people and we will go to general elections as soon as we guarantee its establishment in Jerusalem and we call for pressure on the occupation to ensure its establishment in Jerusalem, and we did not cancel it, but rather postponed it, and we affirm that we have a fully built state in accordance with the rule of law,” Abbas clarified.

Abbas reaffirmed their resistance and the fight against global terrorism.

“We have a constructive dialogue with the US administration to put steps that oblige the occupation to abide by the agreements,” he noted. “The [Israeli Occupation] government evades the political solution “the two-state solution”. But instead puts forward economic alternatives that are unilateral solutions that prolong the occupation and perpetuate the racist one-state reality, and the situation with the occupation is no longer bearable.”

He said, “[Israeli Occupation’s] leaders do not feel any embarrassment in undermining the two-state solution,” and that this opens the door to other alternatives “in light of the organized theft of Palestinian lands, killings, arrests, annexations, and the settlement project in the city of Jerusalem, which we reject along with the attempt to expel the Palestinians in Jerusalem.”

Abbas stressed that this is “ethnic cleansing,” and that the Palestinians will not accept the reality of the occupation and will continue their struggle and the alternatives before them are open, including a “return to Resolution 181, which gives the Palestinians 40% of their lands back.”