Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is on a mission, and for the first time the Palestinian-designed political road map is forcing the international community to take notice. Palestinian negotiators are in the unusual situation of being in the driver’s seat with European and US officials running after them trying to persuade them to make changes in both substance and process. The Palestinian plan focuses on the UN Security Council and aims at producing a resolution that can put a time limit on Israel’s nearly five-decade occupation of Palestinian land.

Senior Palestinian official Nabil Shaath explained to Al-Monitor the process that led to the submission of the current proposal to the UN Security Council. “We looked at why the negotiations failed and we fixed them. One of the reasons for this failure is that the talks have always been chaperoned only by the United States, which is extremely commitment to their ally Israel. We felt it would be better if we had international monitoring to the process,” he said.

Shaath, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, elaborated on the reason behind setting a date for the end of the occupation. “We found out that because there was no date for an Israeli military withdrawal, there was no interest to speed up the talks.” Shaath also notes that the key to the current Palestinian move is to give priority to the issue of borders. “Without changing the scenario by starting first with land and then security, which the Israelis have been doing, we can shake up the process to be a more equitable one.”

The veteran Palestinian leader said that despite feeling positive about the proposal that was prepared, the Palestinian delegation was open to merge its own text with the French draft. “We accepted the French version, which calls for a one-year period of negotiations and two years for a gradual withdrawal,” Shaath said.