PA official: talks with Israel lead nowhere
Palestinians have given up on negotiating directly with Israel, so they are developing other options like a UN resolution and multilateral talks.
On a freezing January morning in Ramallah, a senior Palestinian Authority (PA) official spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity about the policy thinking amid Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ entourage: “Our decision to advance resolutions on Palestinian statehood at the Security Council and to join international covenants and organizations is not a reactive step to the stalemate in the peace process. It is a watershed decision in our strategy toward statehood. For 21 years we held negotiations with various Israeli governments, always under American auspices. We have learned from experience that such negotiations will not bring about the state we aspire for; the one we deserve according to the international community's stance and law. Israel always finds either a political excuse of internal opposition to the government or a security excuse, such as insisting on 100% security control over every potential danger, present or future. If we keep to that path, we would have to wait a hundred years for statehood. The era of negotiations is over.”
He continued with a lengthy and furious monologue, giving examples of excessive Israeli security demands, which he attributed to Israel's occupation policy and its mentality: “Negotiations for Israel have become occupation by other means.”
