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Palestine has re-launched its efforts to reconcile with Israeli leaders as the US brokered talks between Israel and Palestine seem to be on the verge of collapsing. A week before the nine-month target initially set for the deal, a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) delegation will on Tuesday try and revive the talks in Gaza City.
The team is led by Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior member in President Mahmud Abbas’ Fatah party. Independent MP Mustafa Barghuti and people from the Palestinian Arab Front and the Palestinian People’s Party are also a part of the delegation. They are set to meet Prime Minister of the Hamas government Ismail Haniya and number two in the Palestinian Islamist movement Mussa Abu Marzuq. Both of them arrive from Cairo on Monday.
Palestinians have quickly played down the threat of dismantling the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel’s negotiating partner, they had floated earlier, if the talks continue to remain deadlocked. On Tuesday, chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said, “no Palestinian is speaking of an initiative to dismantle the Palestinian Authority. But Israel’s actions have annulled all the legal, political, security, economic and operational aspects of the prerogatives of the Palestinian Authority”. The Palestinian Authority, set up under the 1993 Oslo accords, has won international recognition for its efforts; however, it depends on foreign aid entirely for the administration of autonomous areas of the West Bank.
On Sunday, a senior Palestinian official said that Palestinian negotiators might hand over the responsibility of governing the occupied territories to Israel. He added that the Palestinians told US peace envoy Martin Indyk that they’d be willing to dismantle the PA unless Israel keeps up its promise of releasing the Palestinian prisoners and stops building settlements. US State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said that the threat was “
