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JERUSALEM (JWN and agencies)–Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has responded to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s offer to meet “anytime” by declaring that only if Israel halts all settlement activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem, “we will immediately go to negotiations,” the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds reported.

Abbas made the remark at a political function in Colombia, one of his stops on a tour of South America to lobby support for the Palestinian Authority’s bid for UN membership.

“We want to reach a political solution to help establish the state of Palestine alongside the State of Israel,” Abbas was quoted as saying.

His next stop is Paris, where he is to discuss UN membership with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. PA negotiator Nabil Shaath on Monday told the Ma’an News Agency that already garnered the backing of nine countries on the Security Council: Gabon, Nigeria, Bosnia, Brazil, India, Lebanon, South Africa, China, and Russia.

This notwithstanding, President Barack Obama has said the US would veto the Palestine resolution at the Security Council. Sarkozy has also acknowledged this, saying he supports the Palestinians having observer status at the UN until a peace agreement is achieved.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Foreign Ministry has distributed a list of talking points to its diplomats abroad, outlining Israel’s legal case against the Palestinian Authority’s statehood bid. The main thrust of the document is that the Palestinians are not ready for statehood.

The five-page paper cites principles of international law established by the Montevideo Convention of 1933, according to which there are four preconditions for statehood. An entity must have a permanent population, a defined territory, an effective government, and an ability to maintain relations with other states.

Regarding the first condition, the ministry document states that the Palestinian Authority has “been ambiguous about which group of people would constitute the permanent population of their state.” The ambiguity stems from having a state and at the same time preserving the “refugee” status of Palestinians abroad.

To back up this point, the document quotes a statement by the PA ambassador to Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, quoted Beirut’s Daily Star newspaper, in which he said the future Palestinian state would not issue Palestinian passports to refugees—even those living in the West Bank and Gaza.

The document discounts the PA fulfilling the condition of effective government by pointing out the territories it does not control. “Hamas continues to exercise full control of the Gaza Strip,” the document states. “Despite the signing by Fatah and Hamas of a so-called ‘Reconciliation Agreement’ in May 2011, nothing has changed in practice.”

Indeed, Abbas himself has not even been able to visit Gaza since Hamas seized power there in a 2007 coup.