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Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas gestures as he gives a speech during a meeting with the Palestine Liberation Organization's Central Council in the West Bank on April 25, 2014. Photo by AFP
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Palestine Liberation Organization alone will be in charge of negotiations with Israel, Palestinian president says, adding that he is ready to extend talks in return for prisoner release, settlement freeze.

By Jack Khoury and Reuters

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday the unity government with Hamas would recognize Israel and condemn terrorism, but he said that Palestine Liberation Organization alone – and not the new government – will be in charge of the negotiations with Israel.

Abbas said he was still ready to extend the stalled peace talks, as long as Israel met his long-standing demands to free prisoners and halt construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Abbas responded to criticism that his party is reconciling with a terror organization saying that Israel had also made agreements with Hamas during the presidency of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt.

Israel suspended the troubled, U.S.-brokered negotiations with Abbas on Thursday after he signed a unity pact with rival Islamist group Hamas - a movement which has sworn to destroy Israel.

Commentators said the discussions had already hit a brick wall before the reconciliatoin, and the United States had been struggling to extend them beyond an original April 29 deadline for a peace accord.

Abbas, for the first time since the suspension of talks, said he was still open to re-starting the negotiations and pushing on beyond the deadline. There was no immediate response from Israeli negotiators.

"How can we restart the talks? There's no obstacle to us restarting the talks, but the 30 prisoners need to be released," Abbas told a meeting of senior leaders in the Palestine Liberation Organization at his presidential headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

"On the table we will present our map, for 3 months we'll discuss our map. In that period, until the map is agreed upon, all settlement activity must cease completely," he told the officials, who were gathered for a two-day conference to assess the Palestinian strategy to achieve statehood.

"Without these conditions, we will tell Israel to go ahead and take responsibility over the West Bank and the daily affairs of the Palestinians" Abbas said.

Talks veered toward collapse after Israel refused to release a final group of Palestinian prisoners it had pledged to free in March, and after Abbas signed several international treaties - a move that Israel said was a unilateral move towards statehood.

Palestinians accused Israel of not focusing enough during the last nine months of negotiations on drawing future borders between Israel and the future state of Palestine, and they denounced the expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands.

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RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday that the unity government would continue to follow previous PLO policies and that he remains willing to extend peace talks with Israel, which halted the talks in response to a Fatah-Hamas unity deal signed earlier in the week.

During a televised speech kicking off two days of PLO Central Council meetings in Ramallah, Abbas reasserted that he would be willing to extend negotiations with Israel if it pledged to freeze settlement construction and release the last round of prisoners as agreed at the beginning of the talks.

Israel has dismissed the conditions.

"The upcoming government will obey my policy," Abbas told the PLO council. "I recognize Israel and reject violence and terrorism, and recognize international commitments."

"Without Jerusalem there will be no negotiations," Abbas added, pledging also that the Palestinians would never recognize Israel as a "Jewish state."

Abbas said that the Palestinian recognized it as a state in 1993 and should not have to accept its religious identity, which has been a central Netanyahu demand.

He pointed out that no similar demand was made of Egypt or Jordan when they signed peace treaties recognizing Israel.

He applauded the efforts of US Secretary of State John Kerry, with whom Abbas said he met 40 times during the past nine months.

"He was serious and he put in a huge effort, but unfortunately without results."

With regards to Wednesday's reconciliation deal with Hamas, Abbas said the unity government would recognize Israel and renounce violence.

"The upcoming government will obey my policy," he said. "I recognize Israel and reject violence and terrorism, and recognize international commitments."

A senior Hamas official in Gaza concurred told AFP that the it was a "mostly positive" speech.

"It is not the government's mission to take care of political issues," Bassem Naim, an adviser to Hamas' Gaza premier Ismail Haniyeh, said.

"It has only three main missions: unifying the Palestinian organizations, preparing for elections and reconstructing Gaza."

Abbas spoke ahead of Palestinian crisis talks expected to focus on US peace efforts and the unity deal.

Wednesday's PLO-Hamas deal infuriated Israel, which said it would "not negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by Hamas, a terror organization that calls for the destruction of Israel," and vowed unspecified "measures" in response.

The PLO recognized Israel's right to exist in 1988, but say that recognizing Israel as a "Jewish state" could jeopardize the right of return for Palestinian refugees and limit the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

AFP contributed to this report.

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BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A senior Israeli official said on Saturday that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas' speech earlier in the day marked the end of the peace negotiations, according to Agence-France Presse.

An unnamed official told AFP that Abbas "administered the coup de grace to the peace process today," with his speech earlier in the day, in which he offered a conditional return to peace talks after Israel shut them down two days earlier.

The Israeli official added that the Palestinian leader had "recycled the same conditions, after he already knows Israel won't accept them."

President Abbas had said in a speech to the Palestine Liberation Organization central council in Ramallah that he would return to the negotiating table if if Israel froze construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, freed Palestinian prisoners it promised to release at the beginning of talks, and began discussion on the borders of the future Palestinian state.

Abbas also stressed the new government would "obey" his existing policies, including the recognition of Israel and non-violence.

The speech came after Israel halted talks with the Palestinians on Thursday after a unity agreement was signed between the two largest Palestinian political parties, the PLO-led Fatah and Hamas.

Israel said it refused to engage in negotiations with any party that included Hamas, which it says does not recognize its right to exist and seeks its destruction.

Israel, however, has never recognized the right to exist of the Palestinian state, nor does it abide by non-violence as a principle.