After having just formally submitted his request to the United Nations for Palestine to be considered for full U.N. membership in the Security Council, Abbas will announce it to the world in a few moments.
The speech is being broadcast live on CSPAN here.
Massive crowds are gathering in Ramallah as the world waits to see how Abbas will argue for recognition of Palestine. Twitter is afire right now, and reports of chanting and singing in the streets of Ramallah are widespread as word trickles down that Abbas has officially submitted to the U.N. a formal request for Palestine to be included as a full member through the Security Council.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will also speak (after Abbas, Japan & Bhutan).
LiveBlog:
- Huge applause and whistles for Abbas when he entered and began.
- Notes how negotiations were always primary route, but that they have broken down. All international agreements have been broken/dashed by Israel's government.
- Abbas is being blunt and strong in his words: blames Israel for intensifying settlement construction and taking land for the future State of Palestine.
- Settlement activities represent brutal, aggressive colonial activity, and is a breach of humanitarian law.
- Abbas chose to open by hammering settlement activity and noting breakdown of negotiations as basis for need to go to the U.N.
NOTE: PLEASE CONTINUE THE LIVEBLOG IN THE COMMENTS!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN'T UPDATE THE LIVEBLOG.
Thank you everyone for contributing in the comments. I look forward to reading!
Update: It's 3:30 pm EST, and I'm finally able to sit down for a chunk of time. I look forward to reading through the comments. I just read through most of the comments, and come away with two thoughts:
1) There seemed to be consensus on both speeches, which I was surprised by. I only got a chance to see portions of each, and look forward to viewing them in their entirety soon. Thanks everyone for contributing a Liveblog of sorts in the comments.
2) Community moderation must have worked to some extent, because several out-of-line comments were invisible to me. And while this is an issue that always elicits strong passions, I found some moments of good dialogue mixed in with some less noble moments (some of which were clearly coming from zombies).
After processing what has occurred today - and there is a ton to process - I hope to write a post either tonight or tomorrow on the speeches, related events from today, and what it all might mean going forward. Not that anyone cares or anything -- just typing out loud, so to speak.
Peace everyone.