Palestinian Authority: Israel already gave up on Oslo

In response to report that Israel considering annulling Oslo Accords, Erekat says Israel did not abide by agreement from the beginning anyway.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Erekat talking with hands in air 311 (photo credit: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Erekat talking with hands in air 311
(photo credit: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
In response to a report that Israel was considering annulling the Oslo Accords in reaction to the Palestinian Authority’s plan to ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state on the pre- 1967 lines, PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said that Israel anyway did not abide by the agreement from the beginning.
Erekat said Israel had “relinquished its political and security obligations under the terms of the Oslo Accords.”
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Had Israel abided by these agreements, the Palestinian state would have been established in 1999, Erekat said.
Ghassan Khatib, spokesman for the PA government, said that rescinding the Oslo Accords would harm not only the Palestinians, but Israel as well.
“The Oslo Accords are not only in the interest of the Palestinians at the expense of Israel,” he said. “Such a move would harm the interests of both parties and not only one side.”
Khatib told the Palestine News Network agency that the PA’s statehood bid was not a unilateral act, as charged by Israel.
He said that Israel was the one that was carrying out unilateral moves by building in the settlements “in violation of the principles of the peace process and the twostate solution.”
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PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki dismissed as “mere talk” the reported threat to cancel the Oslo Accords. He said that Israel would not dare embark on such a step “because the world would confront it before the Palestinians.”
He added that some Israeli officials were behind the threat “to undermine the morale of the Palestinians and deter them from going to the UN.”
The PA, he added, will continue to move forward with its plan and “neither Israel nor anyone else would be able to deny us this right.”