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Palestinian Authority may collapse without peace deal: Erakat
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat warned on Wednesday that failure to reach a peace deal with Israel this year could lead to a collapse of the moderate Palestinian Authority. "If we fail to produce an agreement in 2008... we may disappear," Erakat said. "The impact will not be limited to Israel and the Palestinians. Watch the region," he warned.Israel and the Palestinians, led by president Mahmud Abbas, last November relaunched the Middle East peace talks at an international conference in the United States after a seven-year hiatus. Although both Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have expressed their desire to ink a deal by the end of 2008, talks have so far made little headway. Abbas said after meeting Slovenia's Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel in the West Bank town of Ramallah that peace talks were the only option for the Palestinians. "We don't have any other options but to negotiate. Time is short and we must reach a result before the end of the year," he said. Erakat declined to say whether the Islamist Hamas movement could rout Abbas in the West Bank, but conceded the popularity of Abbas has declined sharply while support for the Islamists has risen. "People are angry with us... their pessimism and anger is because of our inability to deliver," he said, referring to a recent poll. The Islamist movement last June violently seized power in Gaza after routing forces loyal to Abbas, effectively splitting the Palestinian Authority in two. Erakat claimed Israel's failure to carry out its commitment to freeze its settlement construction and to ease movement restrictions in the occupied West Bank undermined Abbas's credibility. "At the same time we tell (Palestinians) we will make 2008 the year of peace, we fail to stop roadblocks, we fail to stop settlement activity." He said Olmert personally pledged to Abbas the roadblocks would be removed, but that nothing was done about it. And since the November conference in Annapolis, where Israel committed to halt Jewish settlement activity, 5,378 settlers' houses were built, said Erakat. "Settlement activity must stop... it's either settlements or peace," the negotiator said. Posted by: Fred 2008-03-20 |
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