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Itongadol.- The Palestinian Authority has no intention to deploy forces in the Gaza Strip if there is not also a clear diplomatic end-game initiative between Jerusalem and Ramallah on the horizon, a senior Palestinian source said Wednesday.
But the source also said the US had threatened the PA with sanctions if it takes unilateral moves toward joining international organizations.
There have recently been several conversations between Israeli and Palestinian officials with the hopes of restarting talks, the source said, but in all of them it was apparent that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not have in mind a new diplomatic plan or a map of a future Palestinian state.
In a speech on August 20, Netanyahu said there would be a “new diplomatic horizon” and expressed hope that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas would take part.
Abbas has increasingly voiced a demand that Israel produce a map showing just where it believe the borders of a Palestinian state should be, as a starting point for further negotiations.
“Israel needs to sit with us and write a diplomatic plan that links Gaza and the West Bank, that forms a diplomatic horizon and a peace agreement,” the Palestinian source told The Times of Israel. “But the PA doesn’t aim to send forces to the Gaza Strip or to deploy them there as a buffer force between Israel and Hamas without such a plan. We will reach a situation in which Hamas and Israel will alternately attack us. The PA has no intention to take part in Gaza, or to police Gaza, without a diplomatic horizon.”
The source stressed that in the PA there has been a firm decision to not get involved in Gaza without a clear agreement from Hamas that all the weapons that are currently in the Gaza Strip become “one weapon under one authority.”
He also warned that if there is no diplomatic breakthrough soon, within the next six to twelve months, the security cooperation between Israel and the PA would stop.