Senior PLO official Saeb Erekat said on Sunday that US threats to withdraw aid to Palestinians over the bid for UN membership were "unacceptable".Blackmail?
...Erekat told reporters in Cairo "we appreciate US aid, but to be blackmailed and bargained with over our right to self-determination, on Jerusalem, and on our Arab and Islamic identity is unacceptable."
Erekat is telling the US that the hundreds of millions of dollars that are paid by US taxpayers to the PA every year are not negotiable - that the PA deserves it, period. The US, according to Erekat, has no right to put any conditions on the money it pays the PA whatsoever. And if, Allah forbid, the US tries to influence the PA in any way, it is guilty of "blackmail."
The definition of blackmail, of course, has nothing to do with this scenario in any universe outside Saeb Erekat's fevered imagination. The closest one can come to that term in the Middle East is how the Palestinian Arabs regularly threaten the US and the world with terrorism if they don't get their way - not blackmail, but a Mafia-type protection racket.
Notice also how Erekat, who regularly rails against the very idea of Israel being considered the Jewish state, has no compunction to say that the supposedly democratic Palestinian Arab state would have an "Arab and Islamic identity."
Erekat's hypocrisy shines through yet again.