Abbas offers to join pan-Arab war against Israel

The official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported on Tuesday that PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas supports negotiations with Israel today because it is the only option, but that he would join a war against the Jewish state if all Arab countries were involved. "If you [Arab states] want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don't have the ability to do it,” Abbas told writers and journalists in the home of the Palestinian Ambassador to Jordan this week, according to a translation of the PA newspaper’s report by Palestinian Media Watch. “The West Bank was completely destroyed [by the second intifada] and we will not agree that it will be destroyed again,” he continued. His comments come as diplomatic sources in Oslo are claiming that Abbas has been using various intermediaries to lobby members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee to name him this year’s recipient of the prestigious annual award.