Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spoke at the Paris Climate Change conference on Monday. Photo: Wikipedia.

It is truly amazing.

Every time “Palestine” manages to get membership in an international forum, they try to hijack it for their own selfish purposes.

They do it with UNESCO. They do it at conferences for refugees. They do it during international days for children and for women.

Yesterday, the pattern continued:

President Mahmoud Abbas Monday said Israel’s ongoing violations of international law regarding preserving Palestine’s environment are a major challenge.

Abbas delivered a speech at the Paris Climate Change conference, which was held at Le Bourget starting from November 30 and is expected to continue until December 11.

Abbas addressed the issue of climate change, saying it has become a national challenge for all countries all over the world.

He said, “The state of Palestine, which is a full member in many international organizations and agreements, continues its preparations to join the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change, and to simultaneously and positively contribute and hold its responsibilities as a member state in the near future.”

Considering the Israeli occupation’s impact in Palestine’s environment, Abbas said Israel’s continuous violations of international law regarding preserving the environment in Palestine is a major challenge for Palestinians.

He mentioned a number of violations including, confiscating natural resources, destroying agricultural crops, uprooting trees, hindering developing vital infrastructure for Palestine, dumping all kinds of Wastes in Palestinians’ lands and polluting the groundwater through a system of a racial segregation, which violates of international law.

Abbas said, Palestine continues to suffer from the Israeli occupation and the horrible crimes of Israeli settlers and daily violations of holy Christian and Muslim sites in Jerusalem.

You can tell how seriously Mahmoud Abbas takes environmental and social issues.

Do the people who work so hard on these conferences get upset at these blatant attempts to hijack them for narrow political ends? Or are they so far gone already that they all believe that if only Israel didn’t exist, all other world problems would go away?