A leading Palestinian official has said that the end of March, rather than the end of April, could be the date that the Palestinian leadership moves to join United Nations agencies. “Our agreement was clear,” Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, told Al-Monitor in an exclusive interview. “In return for Israel releasing all 104 [Palestinian] prisoners, we will refrain from joining any further UN agencies. If they renege on this issue, we are free to join UN agencies. This has nothing to do with the end-of-April deadline for the face-to-face talks.” Zaki called the current situation “very dangerous” and said the Central Committee is holding an “open-ended emergency session.”
Israeli officials, including Tzipi Livni, the justice minister and lead negotiator, have threatened that the release of the fourth tranche of prisoners, scheduled for late March, would not go forward unless the Palestinians agreed to an extension of the talks beyond their April 29 deadline.
