Senior Palestinian official: Oslo accords are dead

Palestinian leadership is about to ask the UN Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state and says there will be no return to the previous peace process with Israel.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Participants run past Israeli barrier during Palestine Marathon in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. (photo credit: REUTERS)
Participants run past Israeli barrier during Palestine Marathon in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The Oslo Accords are dead and the Palestinian Authority leadership is about to ask the UN Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state in the pre-1967 lines, a senior Fatah official said on Tuesday.
Othman Abu Gharbieh, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, told the Palestinian daily Al-Quds there would be no return to the previous peace process with Israel, especially in view of the results of the Israeli election.
“The Oslo Accords are dead, although a death certificate has yet to be issued,” Abu Gharbieh said. “We will resort to international boycotts and sanctions and popular resistance [against Israel].”
The Palestinians would also proceed with their intention to suspend security coordination with Israel, he said.
“Our people won’t capitulate,” Abu Gharbieh stressed.
“The option of surrender doesn’t exist. The Palestinian people will struggle with all effective means to achieve our goals now that the Oslo Accords are dead. Our people will struggle with all methods, and I mean all methods.”
The Fatah official accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of “killing” the two-state solution, saying the international community was still refusing to acknowledge that.
Meanwhile, the deputy prime minister of the Palestinian Authority government, Muhammad Mustafa, submitted his resignation on Tuesday.
Mustafa, who also served as economics minister, is the first member of the Fatah- Hamas “national consensus” government to quit.
He also served as head of a committee that was in charge of reconstruction of the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of last summer’s Operation Protective Edge. The reconstruction efforts have been hampered by the ongoing power struggle between the PA and Hamas and the failure of donor countries to fulfill their financial pledges.
A spokesman for the government in Ramallah said that Mustafa resigned for “personal reasons.”