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Dahlan: Fatah Will Not Commit Suicide if Abbas Leaves Office | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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London/Paris, Asharq Al-Awsat – Fatah Central Committee member and spokesman Mohammed Dahlan said that the Fatah movement is capable under any circumstances of finding an alternative to President Mahmoud Abbas if he continues to refuse to run for a second term in office.

Asked about the extent to which he believes this, Dahlan answered, “Yes…must Fatah be incapable of managing [without Mahmoud Abbas]? Should Fatah commit mass suicide?”

Dahlan added, “Our position now is as follows…firstly that our candidate for the forthcoming election is Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas], and the Fatah Central Committee continues to stress the necessity for the President to reconsider his decision?”

Meanwhile, EU ambassadors failed to agree on a unified position on the Swedish proposal to recognize Eastern Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. This failure occurred despite the amendment to the Swedish proposal in a bid to unify the EU position in accordance with the position of the French delegation who introduced the wording “the EU stresses that it has never acknowledged the annexation of Eastern Jerusalem. In the event of genuine peace being achieved, the path to this is for Jerusalem to be the capital of the two states of Palestine and Israel.”