The Palestinian Authority threatened to boycott President Bush and foreign dignitaries who attend Israel’s Independence Day celebrations.
Unnamed aides to Mahmoud Abbas told Reuters Monday that the P.A. president will consider as “temporarily” persona non grata the dozens of top foreign dignitaries who are expected to visit Israel for its 60th birthday bash next month.
Palestinians describe the 1948 founding of Israel to be their nakba, or “catastrophe,” though a U.N. partition plan — violently rejected by the Arabs at the time — called for a Palestinian state to be created alongside the Jewish state.
Bush is widely expected to use his mid-May visit to push for progress in peace talks between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was not immediately clear how the United States would respond to the prospect of its president being boycotted by Abbas’ administration in the West Bank.
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