The Palestinian Authority's only reason for agreeing to and continuing the peace negotiations with Israel is to bring about the release of prisoners, Fatah's spokesman Ahmad Assaf has indicated. Stating that the PA "blackmailed" Israel to release the prisoners, Assaf explained that by virtue of the PA's membership in the UN, the PA is able to threaten Israel with taking it to the International Criminal Court. Assaf maintains that to prevent the PA from doing so, Israel agreed to release 104 prisoners, most of them serving life sentences for murder.
Our membership in the UN is also a weapon. And that's an important card. It's a weapon that's in our pocket. I didn't use it on day one. I didn't say as soon as I got membership in the UN, that I want to go to the International Criminal Court - no. We've been waving it around for two years now: We've obtained the release of the prisoners, we blackmailed [Israel], that is, in quotation marks, and we've taken important positions because we have a card that we're waving around.
[Official PA TV, March 19, 2014)
Nabil Shaath, Fatah MP and Central Committee member and Commissioner of International Relations stated in November 2013 that "due to the prisoners (of whom only half have been released) [parentheses in source], we haven't stopped negotiations and haven't petitioned the UN." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 30, 2013]
Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Shaath said that [the day] the State of Palestine obtained recognition as a non-member state of the UN was without doubt a day that led to a great development in the world's view of our people's rights, after this [Palestinian] people decided to declare its statehood in the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital. Likewise, he noted that there is much to gain from this recognition, from which we will strive to benefit soon, by joining all international agreements and institutions that require no more than a request to join, and this will be translated shortly into a request to join 35 international conventions, the first of which is the Rome Convention.
Shaath emphasized that the leadership did not move forward on joining international organizations [until now] for one reason - which is ensuring the release of the remaining veteran prisoners who were arrested by Israel before the Oslo Accords, and that the leadership is awaiting their release."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 2, 2013]
We pretty much knew all this already:
But that won't stop the US from pressuring Israel to continue the facade.