Palestinian Negotiator to Push Statehood Case with Kerry

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat will present plans to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday calling for a timetable on Israeli withdrawal from Yehuda and Shomron and east Yerushalayim, Palestinian officials said.

Erekat and intelligence chief Majid Faraj will hold a series of meetings with senior officials in Washington in which they will press the case for Palestinian statehood, after a year of talks between Israel and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas collapsed in April.

The discussions with Kerry will focus on establishing a timeframe: Renewed peace negotiations for no more than nine months followed by a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Yehuda and Shomron and east Yerushalayim that will take no more than three years, according to a Palestinian official close to Mahmoud Abbas.

In an interview with a Palestinian news outlet last week, Abbas said it should only take “half an hour or an hour” to delineate the borders of a Palestinian state, since the United States agreed they should be based on the 1967 ceasefire lines.

“There’s either a political solution or there isn’t,” he said. “But going here and there, up and down, talking and not talking — it’s been 20 years and nothing has happened.”

If there is no agreement on borders in coming months — at least by the end of the year — Abbas said he would have no choice but to push ahead with unilateral statehood moves, including a resolution in the United Nations Security Council and joining the International Criminal Court, which could open the way for proceedings against Israel.

This article appeared in print on page 17 of the September 3rd, 2014 edition of Hamodia.