Abbas: EU seeks collapse of government

aljazeera.net: "We will eat cooking oil and olives," a defiant Haniya said on Friday of the Palestinian people, who elected Hamas to power in a landslide election in January.

Haniya said the US and its allies were mistaken if they thought the newly sworn-in government would fall in four to six weeks because of the aid cuts.

"This government will continue for the full four years," Haniya said at Gaza's biggest refugee camp, where poverty and unemployment were rampant long before the European Union and the US froze direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority.

Thousands of supporters at the camp chanted Haniya's name in unison.

They criticised the US, the EU, and Israel which has cut off tax revenue transfers, screaming: "Shame on you."

Speaking through a loudspeaker, a Hamas activist said: "If our people starve, we will blow up our bodies in the depths of the Zionist entity."


...Also on Friday, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, asked Morocco's King Mohamed VI to take up with the EU the issue of resumption of aid to Palestinians, Al Jazeera reported.

Concluding a visit to Morocco, Abbas said that the aim of the EU in deciding to block all financial assistance to the PA, would have been to see the collapse of the body. Read more

U.S. blocks UN draft pressing Israel to end attacks
Asked by reporters to confirm that Washington alone had opposed issuing the statement, Bolton responded, "If I were the only holdout, I'd be proud of that fact."

Qatar, acting on behalf of the Arab group at the United Nations, the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement of 112 nations, immediately requested an open council debate on the Middle East, which was scheduled for Monday afternoon.

"I don't see that that meeting is going to be productive, because I don't think the Security Council is an exercise in group therapy," Bolton said.