Palestinian Officials Call for Freezing Relations with Israel

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

Oslo created the Palestinian Authority (PA) to act as Israel's enforcer in the Occupied Territories.

Longstanding contentious issues were off-the-table, left for final status talks - including ending occupation, self-determination, settlements, borders, diaspora Palestinians' right of return, borders, air, water and other resource rights, along with East Jerusalem as Palestine's exclusive capital.

These and other issues remain unresolved. Since 1993, the illegal settler population increased from around 200,000 to over 650,000 - living on stolen Palestinian land.

Apartheid is official Israeli policy. So is colonization. Israel wants all valued Judea and Samaria land for exclusive Jewish development and use, Jerusalem as its exclusive capital, diaspora Palestinians denied the right of return, others on land Israel wants for itself ethnically cleansed.

On Monday, the PLO Central Council, its legislative body, long subservient to Israeli interests, called for suspending Oslo, freezing recognition of Israel and  security coordination in place established by the Accords - in response to Trump's Jerusalem declaration and his no-peace/peace plan, seeking Palestinian subjugation, not recognition of its fundamental rights.

Central Council members urged the international community to uphold relevant international law and UN resolutions on Palestine, enabling it to achieve de jure and de facto independence, exercising sovereignty over land within June 1967 borders - 22% of historic Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The Council rejects US involvement as broker in any future peace talks, disqualified by its unacceptable actions. 

It called Trump's Jerusalem declaration a renunciation of Palestine's right to East Jerusalem as its future capital.

The "intermediate phase" regarding Israel is over, the Council said. It's time to recognize Palestinian statehood under occupation.

Though attainable, Palestinian leadership never sought it. General Assembly members admit new UN member states, not the Security Council.

Statehood is attainable under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution 377 - requiring a two-thirds General Assembly majority, easily gotten, US Security Council veto power unable to block it.

Not having sought statehood, in deference to Israel and Washington, shows Palestinian leadership rhetoric is hollow.

PLO Central Council members seeking statehood through the SC shows they don't, in fact, want it.

It's not the body involved in admitting new member states, the General Assembly's jurisdiction.

Yielding to Washington's in the SC assures rejection of all fundamental Palestinian rights.

In 2015, overwhelming Central Council approval (74 - 2 with 12 abstentions) of suspending security coordination with Israel was never implemented.

Hamas says what it means and means what it says. Its officials weren't involved in the Central Council meeting.

It issued a statement, rejecting Abbas' hollow renunciation of Oslo, saying his agenda doesn't "meet the ambitions of our people," adding:

"The Central Council must end Oslo and stop security coordination and withdraw the recognition (of Israel)."

It never did before. It's highly unlikely to go this far as long as Abbas and other longstanding Israel collaborators remain Palestine's ruling authority.

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