Itongadol.- The peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel are headed toward failure, Mohamed Shtayyeh, former member of the Palestinian negotiating team, said Wednesday.
He also called on the PA to endorse “resistance” against Israel instead of providing services to Palestinians.
Shtayyeh, who recently resigned from the team in protest against lack of progress in the talks, said that the negotiations wouldn’t be extended for one day after the nine-month timeline, which expires in April.
“We are headed toward the one-state option,” Shtayyeh said during a seminar organized by the Palestinian lawyers union in Jericho.
“The peace talks will end at the end of April,” he noted. “The talks wouldn’t be extended even for one day. The talks will end in failure and then we will bid farewell to the two-state solution as Israel continues its policy of settlement and creating new facts on the ground.”
Shtayyeh said that the current conditions do not assist the Palestinians in establishing their own state. “Whether we accept or reject [US Secretary of State] John Kerry’s proposals wouldn’t help in anything,” he said.
“No deal is better than a weak one. The Palestinian Authority can’t continue in its present form. It should change its function to a resistance authority and not one that provides services.”
Shtayyeh said that the PA leadership was planning to seek membership in the UN after the failure of the talks so as to prosecute Israel for “war crimes.”
He also called for an international conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict similar to the Geneva conference on Syria and Iran.
The Palestinian goal, Shtayyeh added, is to internationalize the Palestinian issue.
Meanwhile, Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat announced Thursday that he would meet with Kerry in Washington next week.
Erekat said that the Palestinians were expecting Kerry to present them with a written document outlining the US position toward the peace process.
Erekat said that he would brief Kerry on “all the facts on the ground that have been imposed by Israel and which contradict with the talk about peace.”
The Israeli government, he charged, is “destroying peace and doesn’t want Kerry to return to the region to pursue the peace talks.”