Saeb Erekat not so "moderate" in Arabic

When he is quoted in the Western press, PA negotiator Saeb Erekat comes across as fully committed to peace and the "peace process."

In Arabic, however, he shows that peace is not at all what he cares about.

From WAFA:

[Saeb Erekat] said during his visit to the province of Salfit today, that there will be no peace without full restoration of our national rights, no peace with the presence of the settlements, and [no peace without] the return and compensation for refugees is a legitimate right to be the return of refugees and the creation of an international mechanism to compensate for the tragedy which they were subjected by the occupation.

In other words, Erekat is saying that unless the PA reaches its current maximal demands, it will keep supporting terror. Negotiations are not a give-and-take; they are a means to gain 100% of Palestinian Arab demands, no less - and if Israel doesn't agree, then there will be terrorism and war, fully supported by the PA, forever.

The current relative lull in terror attacks from Fatah is not because Fatah embraces peace; but it is a tactical move to gain concessions from Israel.

MEMRI translates an earlier interview of Erekat where he implies that the current maximal demands are only the beginning:

"It is true that the negotiations continued for many years, but don’t you know that President Yasser Arafat was besieged at Camp David and was killed unjustly, only because he adhered to Jerusalem, and because he refused to let the Israeli measures on the ground give rise to any [Israeli] right or any [Palestinian] obligation? The Palestinian negotiators could have given in in 1994, 1998, or 2000, and two months ago, brother Abu Mazen [i.e. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud 'Abbas] could have accepted a proposal that talked about Jerusalem and almost 100% of the West Bank, but it is not our goal to score points against one another here.

"Our strategic goal, when we strive for peace, is not to do so at any price. We strive for peace on the basis of an Israeli withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 borders, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip geographically connected." […]

"There will be no peace whatsoever unless East Jerusalem - with every single stone in it - becomes the capital of Palestine.

[…]

"Our survival and steadfastness on this land, our wresting of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital - this is what we can achieve in our generation."[…]

Meaning that in future generations, they will attempt to take more.

And he reveals who has been "obstinate" towards peace:

Israeli prime minister Ehud] Olmert, who talked today about his proposal to Abu Mazen, offered the 1967 borders, but said: 'We will take 6.5% of the West Bank, and give in return 5.8% from the 1948 lands, and the 0.7% will constitute the safe passage, and East Jerusalem will be the capital, but there is a problem with the Haram and with what they called the Holy Basin.' Abu Mazen too answered with defiance, saying: 'I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. I came to demarcate the borders of Palestine - the June 4, 1967 borders - without detracting a single inch, and without detracting a single stone from Jerusalem, or from the holy Christian and Muslim places.' This is why the Palestinian negotiators did not sign…"

So while the Western press is fixated on Netanyahu's "hawkishness," darling Mahmoud Abbas has shown zero desire to compromise on anything, a position that Erekat fully supports.

This is the so-called "moderate" position of the Palestinian Arabs - a constant war without end as long as Israel does not fully capitulate, and then a lull to be followed by a new war to expel all Jews from "Palestine."