Erekat: No Settlement Freeze Means No Negotiations
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat explains that a freeze on Israeli settlement activity is a condition for resuming negotiations with Israel in an interview with Shlomi Eldar.
Israel is waiting for President Barack Obama. Social networks across the internet are full of petitions and “likes,” pleading with the president to give a speech about peace to the Israeli masses gathered in Rabin Square.
In contrast, apathy over Obama’s visit dominates the Palestinian street. No special preparations are underway, and there is a decided lack of excitement. Obama’s first visit to the Palestinian Authority? Who cares?
There are no plans to celebrate the presidential visit to Ramallah, because Obama isn’t considered objective. In fact, he is considered hostile. When it comes to Obama, the Palestinians are like large swathes of the Israeli public. They don’t really like him. They haven’t forgotten the part he played in the failure of Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen’s efforts to win recognition of Palestine’s full statehood at the United Nations (September 2011). But that’s not all. When Abu Mazen returned to the UN a year later with a watered-down proposal to recognize Palestine as an observer state, the president issued a veto yet again.
But this apathy is not just the result of Obama’s positions. It stems from a deep-seated belief among the Palestinians in particular and the Arab world in general that the United States is Israel’s patron, regardless of who happens to be sitting in the White House. They think it has always been like that, and it always will be.
