Former Palestinian Authority prime minister Ahmed Qurei, who was one of the
architects of the Oslo Accords, on Saturday called on Palestinians to consider a
one-state solution with Israel instead of a two-state solution.
Voicing
frustration and disappointment with the peace process, Qurei, who played a major
role in secret and public negotiations with Israel over the past two decades,
said that the “one-state solution, despite the endless problems it embraces, is
one of the solutions that we should be contemplating through an internal
dialogue.”
The Palestinians should be talking publicly about the onestate
solution, putting it on the table as an option and throwing it in the face of
Israel as “burning embers,” he said.
Qurei’s call for a one-state
solution came in an article he published on Saturday in the pan-Arab
London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper.
Qurei said that the two-state
solution, which was first endorsed by the Palestine National Council (the PLO’s
parliament- in-exile) in 1988, has lost its momentum.
He blamed Israel
for “burying” the two-state solution by building settlements and creating new
facts on the ground in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. It was relevant “before
Israeli bulldozers buried this project,” he said, likening efforts to achieve a
twostate solution to “ploughing the sea and a long political
comedy.”
Israel has managed to “decapitate” the two-state solution
through its actions and measures in Jerusalem and the West Bank, he
charged.
Qurei accused the US and Western countries of failing to fulfill
their promises to help the Palestinians achieve statehood.
He also blamed
the Arab world for being preoccupied with other matters instead of focusing on
the Palestinian issue.
Some Palestinians and political factions have
begun talking seriously about the one-state solution, Qurei added.
PA
President Mahmoud Abbas has come out against the onestate solution, emphasizing
over and again that the two-state solution remains the first and last option for
the Palestinians.
Qurei’s call for a one-state solution for Israelis and
Palestinians came shortly after large posters promoting the idea appeared on
billboards in various parts of the West Bank.
It was not clear who was
behind the posters favoring a one-state solution. However, Fatah activists were
quick to remove the posters.
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