“Abu Mazen's speech was filled with falsehood, deceitful and encourages incitement and lawlessness in the Middle East,” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s fiery speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

Abbas did not announce his resignation or the dismantlement of the Palestinian Authority, as many predicted he would do.

Instead, he repeated his old threat to abandon signed accords with Israel in Oslo in 1993 “as long as Israel refuses to commit to the agreements with us” and he accused Israel of trying to violate the status quo on the Temple Mount by allowing Jewish visitors to the site.

“In contrast to the Palestinians, Israel is strictly maintaining the status quo on the Temple Mount and is committed to continuing to do so in accordance with the agreements between us and the Jordanians and the Waqf,” Netanyahu’s office responded.

“We expect and call on the Palestinian Authority and its leader to act responsibly and accede to the proposal of the Prime Minister of Israel and enter into direct negotiations with Israel without preconditions,” it said.

“The fact that he – time and again – has refused to do so is the best possible proof of the fact he does not intend to reach a peace agreement.”

In an opinion piece Abbas published on Tuesday in the Huffington Post, Abbas said that the Palestinians could not hold bilateral talks with Israel as long as it was an “occupying power’ and that the only way forward was through a multilateral process.

Israel’s Opposition leaders expressed disappointment at Abbas’speech. Zionist Union leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni and Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid expressed disappointment,

Zionist leader Isaac Herzog said statements by Abbas accusing Israel of apartheid were twisted and served only the extremists in both nations.

“The Israelis and Palestinians deserve hope and normal lives,” Herzog said. “Abbas and Netanyahu are leaders who are afraid of making decisions and prefer slogans and mutual recriminations, while leaving our future hanging in the wind. Instead of taking advantage of a rare chance for creating alliances with moderate countries who want to partner against Islamic terror, they are drowning in their own useless rhetoric.”

Herzog’s colleague Tzipi Livini said “speeches, accusations and flags will not create a Palestinian State, only direct negotiations with Israel.”

“The time has come for the Palestinian leadership to realize that a Palestinian state can only arise through agreements that guarantee Israeli security. Attempts to get the international community to force Israel to make concessions that will harm Israel’s interests will not succeed and are doomed to failure.”

Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid accused Abbas of uttering “terrible words of incitement.”

“Maybe it comes from frustration, but it is frustration of their own doing,” Lapid said.