U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will hold meetings in Rome with Palestinian Authority official Saeb Erekat today or tomorrow even while Erekat insists it will request by Monday “at the latest” to recognize it is a country based and officially reject Israel’s borders.
Kerry also will talk with Russian and other foreign officials Sunday. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is flying to Rome today and will speak with Kerry Monday in a meeting that is scheduled for “several hours.”
The American view, as usual, is that its brokering the failed peace process is what will bring peace on earth and good will to men.
“We’re trying to figure out a way to help defuse the tensions and reduce the potential for more conflict, and we’re exploring various possibilities to that end,” Kerry said Friday.
Several Israeli Cabinet ministers have said what others are too diplomatic or too scared to say – that Kerry could reduce tensions if he simply would bud out.
Netanyahu has angered the Obama administration by not agreeing to another building freeze for Jews in Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem, all claimed by the Palestinian Authority, knowing that doing so would be one step before a de facto recognition that Jews must not live there.
The Palestinian Authority has angered the Obama administration because it thinks Washington let it down by not bending Israel’s will.
Kerry is galloping to Rome to try to head off the official PA request to the United Nations to dictate what the “Peace Profess” was not able to dictate – submission of Israel to the will of the world for which the Oslo Accord’s stipulation for a negotiated agreement with Israel was only a tactic to make Arab demands an ultimatum.
This is not analysis. This is the Palestinian Authority’s officially stated policy that “negotiations” never were intended.
Its official WAFA news agency reported Sunday:
The Palestinian leadership is convinced that the negotiations path in its current form is not effective and makes the statehood an indefinite issue, therefore, the ministry has considered activating all possible operational tools to create an interactive new state out of the ordinary framework to achieve the same goal, which is recognizing Palestine as an independent state.
Its chief “negotiator” Erekat said on Sunday it will submit a resolution to the United Nations “in the coming few hours, or maybe on Monday” to recognize the Palestinian Authority based on the Temporary Armistice Lines drawn up in 1949 and which were erased in the Arab world’s attempt to annihilate Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967.
“We want a clear and specific resolution for a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, resolving all the final status issues, releasing all detainees and refugees and labeling settlement activity illegal and should be stopped immediately, including in Jerusalem,” Erekat said.
President Barack Obama is hiding his “veto” card in the United Nations Security Council. Israel can no longer count on him to use it and block the resolution.
The final text that Erekat will submit, if he does, is not yet known because there are several versions flying around.
Kerry will meet separately with Abbas and Netanyahu to try to come up with a resolution that Israel can stomach.
The United States already has threatened to use the veto to foil a Jordanian draft that sets the borders in stone and gives Israel until November 2016 to honor them by expelling more than half a million Jews, abandoning property worth hundreds of billions of dollars and giving the Palestinian Authority army the key to “protect” Israel.