The new Israeli government was warned on Wednesday that a refusal to continue serious peace negotiations intended to establish a Palestinian state could force the Palestinian Authority to dissolve itself.
The warning, by a senior PA official, came only a day after Israel’s new rightwing government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, took office. It also came as Israel’s new foreign minister said the government did not feel obligated by the commitments made during the US-sponsored Annapolis peace initiative.
Rafik Husseini, the chief-of-staff of Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, said: “If Netanyahu or his government continue to do what the Israeli government has done even more vigorously, the consequence is the practical end of the Palestinian Authority as a structure.”
Mr Husseini argued the Palestinians faced a government that encouraged the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and refused to endorse a two-state solution. “No Palestinian leader can continue to do peace when the objective of the Israeli state – as stated by its government – is the complete opposite of peace,” he added.
The PA was formed by the Oslo peace accords in 1993 as a quasi-government to prepare for Palestinian statehood. “If the PA cannot deliver [on the promise of an independent state], it has to change direction,” Mr Husseini said.
Mr Netanyahu has vowed to continue peace talks with the PA, as well as with neighbouring Arab states. However, he has so far declined to endorse a two-state solution – the cornerstone of all recent efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offering instead what he calls “economic peace” to the Palestinians.
In a further sign of the government’s break with the policies of the previous administration, Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and the leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, said he did not feel bound by the recent US-sponsored peace effort launched in Annapolis in 2007.
Mr Lieberman said the Annapolis conference – at which the Israeli and Palestinian leaders committed themselves to the formation of a Palestinian state – had “no validity”, since no document was ratified by the Israeli government or by parliament.
Mr Husseini’s comments, in an interview with the Financial Times, reflect intensifying concern among Palestinian and international leaders about the course of the new Israeli government.
Front Page Features