Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, has issued a length report to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) that calls for withdrawing recognition of Israel unless Jerusalem recognizes the PA.
The Ma’an News Agency, based n Bethlehem and with close ties to the Palestinian Authority, reported Thursday:
In a report entitled ‘Determining Palestinian-Israeli relations: Changing, not merely improving, the situation’ the PLO official recommends that the Palestinian leadership consider retracting its recognition of Israel until the Israeli government issues a reciprocal recognition of a Palestinian state.
As seen in the video below, Yasser Arafat in 1988 explicitly said at a Stockholm press conference:
We accept two states, the Palestine state and the Jewish state of Israel.’
The declaration helped succeed in advancing the “peace process” by which the PLO, which is the superior body to what now is the Palestinian Authority, wrangled hundreds of concessions from Israel without any compromise on its part.
Arafat’s declaration fell short of satisfying American demands that it recognize Israel’s right to exist under U.N. resolutions 242 and 348 that were the basis for a negotiated peace agreement that never happened.
Arafat also renounced terrorism.
Then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres recognized Arafat’s remarks for what they were and called them a ”cunning exercise in public relations” while lacking “a commitment in reality.”
Plenty of blood has been spilled since then, as is well-known by relatives of thousands of victims of Palestinian Authority terror.
Mahmoud Abbas, who succeeded Arafat after his death, brilliantly brought the Palestinian Authority to the brink of achieving its stated aim, but he has refused to recognize Israel as a “Jewish” state because doing so would make it almost impossible to force Israel into accepting millions of foreign Arabs into the country, leaving Jews as a minority.
Erekat now has gone even further with his report that urges the PLO not to recognize Israel at all, Jewish or not, unless the same recognition is given to the Ramallah regime.
The chief negotiator went off the face of the Earth and said, according to Ma’an:
Efforts [should] be made for Hamas and Islamic Jihad to join the PLO’s Executive Committee and [he] urged the PLO and Palestinian factions to support popular resistance and the boycott of Israeli settlement products.
The PLO official also recommended that the Palestinian leadership play a better role in assisting the Palestinian diaspora in Lebanon and Syria.
At first glance, it seems that Erekat has lost his marbles.
He knows very wall that Israel will not recognize the Palestinian Authority because doing so would be an implicit agreement to turn over the country to Ramallah.
Erekat knows very well that inviting Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the PLO executive would rip the cover off the Palestinian Authority as sponsor of terror.
He probably does not understand that the Boycott Israel movement has reached its peak and is going the way of the Palestinian Authority, a moribund entity.
So what could be going in his mind?
Considering the mayhem in the Palestinian Authority government, which this week dissolve or did not dissolve depending on which official was the last to speak, Erekat could be jockeying to replace Abbas, who is 80 years old and in the eight year of a four-year term to which he was elected.
Erekat fits the bill to take over the reins because the ambition of any Palestinian Authority leader is exactly the opposite of what the world thinks it wants.
Neither Abbas nor Erekat want to see it become a state because it would collapse like a house of cards, all of which are jokers.
Below is Arafat’s declaration in 1988.