PLO executive committee chairman Saeb Erekat threatened Thursday that he “would not rule out the possibility the Palestine Liberation Organization might withdraw its recognition of Israel,” according to a report published in Al Quds al Arabi.
There is nothing new about this announcement, other than the bald-faced announcement itself. The PLO “recognized” Israel in 1988, accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 and supposedly renounced terrorism after the United States twisted the arm of PLO chairman Yasser Arafat.
But in fact, the Palestinian Authority government that has operated under the aegis of the PLO always supported terror under the Arafat administration. It subsequently supported terror under the administration of Mahmoud Abbas as well, as documented and translated by the media watchdog organization, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).
Last month Abbas awarded the entity’s Order of Merit for Culture, Sciences an Arts to the cartoonist at the Al-Ayyam daily newspaper who has been glorifying terrorist stone-throwing attacks on Israeli motorists.
The Yasser Arafat Youth Center in Jenin this month named a football tournament after the terrorist who murdered two Israeli rabbis and wounded the wife and baby of one of them in a stabbing attack Oct. 3 in the Old City of Jerusalem.
According to a Nov. 2 report in Al-Hayat al-Jadida translated by the PMW, a PA municipality also named a street after the “martyr shahid” Muhanned Halabi, with the town’s mayor saying “This is the least we can do for Martyr Halabi.”
The Fatah faction led by Abbas fanned the flames further, officially bringing soil from the grounds of the Al Aqsa Mosque at the Temple Mount to Halabi’s grave. The Palestinian Authority Bar Association awarded an honorary law degree to the 19-year-old murderer.
The PA Ministry of Education and Higher Education, and the General Union of Palestinian Teachers also held meetings and issued news releases praising Halabi’s attacks.
And to this day, maps of the territory of the Palestinian Authority – “Palestine” to PA residents – are comprised of the entire area of the State of Israel, which is completely erased.
All this, decades after the PLO and PA supposedly had “recognized” the State of Israel and had “renounced terrorism.”
Or not.
So what is really new about the former lead negotiator of the PLO telling the world that he doesn’t rule out the possibility of withdrawing a recognition that never really existed?