Palestinian negotiator Erekat blames Israel for stalled peace talks

The blame game - Israel offers unconditional talks, but Palestinians say Israel is an obstacle to renewing negotiations. Palestinians insist on renewing negotiations from the last offer, but at the time they refused to sign off on what was agreed, and the new Israeli government is not obligated by the previous offers.

 

Palestinians say Israel is violating the roadmap, but they have not fulfilled their own basic phase I obligations, which include dismantling terror groups. Instead, one of the terror groups took over Gaza. They were supposed to stop incitement, but the US funded Palestinian education system teaches that Haifa is a part of Palestine, and internal Fatah resolutions call for the destruction of Israel. You wouldn't know any of that from the Reuters report below.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

 

 

Last update - 12:04 26/10/2009    

 

 PA negotiator: Israel to blame for stalled peace talks  By Reuters 
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are unlikely to resume any time soon, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Monday, blaming Israel for the impasse and urging Washington to do the same.

 

"The gap is still wide and Israel does not give a single sign of meeting its obligations under the road map, halting settlement activities and resuming negotiations where they left off," he told Voice of Palestine radio.

 

"I do not see any possibility for restarting peace talks in the near future," Erekat said.

 

The U.S.-backed peace "road map" of 2003, which charts a course to Palestinian statehood, commits Israel to halting settlement activity in the West Bank.

 

"If President [Barack] Obama's administration cannot make Israel abide by its commitments, it has to announce that Israel is the party that is obstructing the launching of peace negotiations," Erekat said, referring the road map agreements.

 

Resisting U.S. pressure to comply, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a complete cessation of construction within settlements, saying the needs of growing settler families must be accommodated.

 

Israel also accuses Palestinians of failing to meet their road map commitments to curb violence and incitement against Israel - notably by Hamas Islamists who have controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007.

 

Netanyahu has also rejected Palestinian demands to abide by what they said were land-for-peace understandings reached with his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, in a year of negotiations that followed a U.S.-sponsored peace conference in November 2007.

 

Clinton's assessment

 

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed Obama a less-than-glowing assessment of Middle East peace efforts.

 

Her status report followed separate meetings in Washington between Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, and Israeli and Palestinian negotiators aimed at narrowing the gap and restarting direct talks suspended since December.

 

Obama is sending Mitchell back to the region for a fresh attempt at restarting peace talks, and Clinton will consult with Arab foreign ministers on the subject in Morocco in early November, a U.S. administration official said last week.

 

Netanyahu has called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resume negotiations immediately without preconditions.

 

Locked in a power struggle with Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, Abbas last week called presidential and parliamentary elections for January - but Hamas said it would not cooperate, raising the possibility any vote could further deepen the schism between the West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza.