News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) PA/Fatah chairman Mahmoud Abbas threatened on Sunday that he would resign from his leadership position if an agreement with Israel is not reached within six months.

"The next six months are critical and if an agreement cannot be reached during this time, there will be no point, in my view, in remaining in my position," Abbas told ultra-leftist MK Yossi Beilin.

He added that Israel will not have a better negotiating partner than the PLO's current leadership, which – he claimed – believes in territorial compromise and a Palestinian state next to Israel. A diplomatic dead end, he added, could take the Middle East back to "the catastrophe of 2000 which followed the failure at Camp David." This, he said, would be a victory for the extremists in the region.