PalArab "negotiator" says his side has nothing to negotiate

The chief Palestinian Arab "negotiator" has today repeated what I reported him saying last week in an Arabic autotranslation, now being quoted in a real translation saying the same things - and more:

Ahmad Abed al Rahman, the spokesperson of the Fatah movement and President Abbas' advisor said in a statement on Tuesday that the Palestinian side focuses in its meetings and negotiations on two basic issues.

Firstly, is the need for Israel to abide by its commitments to remove military checkpoints, release detainees and halt the construction of settlements and the Separation Wall.

Did Israel ever commit to any of these? Plus, this sounds like four issues, not one.

The second issue relates to the final status issues and the necessity for Israel to be ready for dialogue over these issues in order to arrive at a solution. Otherwise everything that has been done up to this point will be useless.

Abed al Rahman denied the rumours in some of the media, that the US Secretary of State is trying to convince the Palestinian to lower their demands regarding a joint agreement between them and the Israelis, on the kind of document to be presented to the international conference in Annapolis in November. He declared that Palestinian participation in the conference will help them to restore their legitimate rights.

He also said that the ongoing meetings between the Palestinians and the Israelis in recent weeks have been mainly aimed at reaching a final agreement to end the Israeli occupation. He added that negotiations are another form of resistance through which Palestinians can bring an end to the occupation. He clarified that one form of struggle is the international conference which President Bush had called for, especially as most officials are saying that had this is the moment for the establishment of an indepenent Palestinian state.

Abed al Rahman went on to say that even if the Israeli side was behaving in an arrogant way, this does not mean the Palestinians should despair as the negotiating team will continue to work with all means possible.

In response to reports that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has demanded more compromises as a condition of his government's acceptance of a formula for a joint document, he said that " The Israeli side does not want to end the occupation and the settlements. All they think about is plastic surgery for the reality of occupation; this will not lead to peace. The Israelis should take a historical decision to end their occupation of Palestinian territory."

He concluded by saying that the Palestinian side has nothing to give up.

Apparently, the chief "negotiator's" entire role is to try to extract everything he can from Israel and not to give anything in return - and then prepare for the next summit, where the exercise will be repeated. This farce is official PA policy.

By any reasonable standard, this would be considered "extremist" or "hard-line" or "intransigent" - but since we are talking about the Good Terrorists from Fatah, who are the darlings of the West, one will never hear any of those pejorative words applied to the PalArabs, only the Israelis. (And Hamas conveniently seems to exist to make Fatah look good in comparison. We'll just sweep under the rug that Hamas was democratically elected by the peaceful Palestinian Arabs, and probably would be again.)

What kind of a joke is going on here? Why on earth would Israel even consider attending this absurd exercise in being demonized, not to mention outnumbered? What can Israel possibly get in return when the Palestinian Arab negotiator cannot even say that he would try to stop terror attacks?