Chief Palestinian negotiator Saed Erekat said Friday at the Med Forum in the Italian capital that Israel has pushed the current moderate leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to the verge of collapse and total delegitimization. Erekat, who is also the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) secretary, added that he saw a ''dark future'' if the international community does not force Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu into an agreement foreseeing a two-state solution along the 1967 borders.Let's parse this a little bit.
''We have recognized Israel and promised our population that this would have led to a Palestinian state. However, Israel continues to not want to recognize us and we are living in a regime of occupation and apartheid.''
''If the PA is weakened further by Israel's attitude, the Islamic State (ISIS) will arrive in the Palestinian Territories and the conflict - which up until now has been kept at the political level - will become religious: between a Jewish state and an Islamic one,'' Erekat warned. ''It will be the abyss.''
"a 'dark future' if the international community does not force Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu into an agreement foreseeing a two-state solution along the 1967 borders."
Why can't a Palestinian state be along the borders outlined in one of the Israeli peace proposals? Why can there not be peace with compromises on the PA's part? Because they aren't interested in peace; they are interested in having the "international community" hand them their demands on a silver platter.
And how does he want to make that occur? Why, with threats, by saying that ISIS will take over the West Bank and Gaza.
This means that Erekat is saying that the Palestinian people cannot be trusted to stop ISIS from taking over their territory - ISIS can appeal to enough of them to overturn the existing Palestinian leadership.
If that is true - then why would things be different if Palestine was a state? How could Fatah stop people from being radicalized for ISIS when they are part of the movement to radicalize their own youth to kill Jews? How can they stop the Islamicization of the territories when they themselves have ensured that Christians would flee their supposedly benevolent rule?
Erekat is saying that his people aren't mature enough to fend off ISIS from attracting their youth - and is using that as a reason to hand them a state???
If Erekat is afraid of ISIS taking over, then he would want Israel to militarily re-occupy the entire West Bank as quickly as possible to ensure the security of his people!
But this is how Erekat and Abbas work. They make a straw man argument that they must get all of their demands or there won't be peace. It is Mafia protection racket logic - we'll keep things quiet if you give us what we want, otherwise you'll pay.
Yet the West is happy to lap it up.
