Saeb Erekat continues to do what he does best - threaten the world with terror if people don't toe the Palestinian line.
On Friday:
A senior Palestinian official warned on Friday that implementation of Donald Trump’s pledge to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would destroy any prospects for peace with Israel, even as a spokesman for the U.S. President-elect said he remained committed to the move.Nobody took Erekat's Friday warnings seriously. so, like a child trying to get attention, he upped the ante on Monday:
Erekat said he would like to look Trump and Friedman in the eye and tell them “if you were to take these steps of moving the embassy and annexing settlements in the West Bank, you are sending this region to more chaos, lawlessness and extremism."
If the incoming Trump administration moves the US embassy to Jerusalem, the PLO will revoke its recognition of Israel, the prospect of a two-state solution will be over, and any hope of Israeli-Palestinian peace in the future will vanish, the top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned on Monday.
Speaking on a conference call organized by the Wilson Center policy forum in Washington, DC regarding expectations from the Trump administration, Erekat reeled off a list of what he said would be the consequences of President-elect Donald Trump honoring his campaign pledge and relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.I can't wait for the embassy to move - because exactly none of these things will happen. Erekat won't resign, Arabs won't close US embassies, the PLO won't tear up its agreements, and there will be no additional terrorism in the region.
Erekat said he would immediately resign as the chief Palestinian negotiator, and that “the PLO will revoke its recognition of Israel” as well as all previously signed agreements with Israel.
Furthermore, said Erekat, all American embassies in the Arab world would be forced to close — not necessarily because Arab leaderships would want to close them, but because the infuriated public in the Arab world would not “allow” for the embassies to continue to operate.
Erekat noted that he held meetings last week in Washington with State Department officials, but failed to secure meetings he had sought with incoming Trump administration officials. “I don’t know any of them,” he said of Trump’s personnel.
Let's take the threats one by one.
As I've mentioned, I've been looking in Arab media to see if there is any groundswell of anger over the idea of the embassy moving. There is virtually none outside an odd cleric or two in the Palestinian territories themselves. Arabs have real problems to worry about, and this is not on their top hundred issues.
The PLO won't tear up any agreements with Israel, because it stands far more to lose than to gain. After all, it now runs a fairly independent territory in Areas A and B and despots don't give up their power so quickly to make a point.
But notice how Erekat threatens Israel for US actions.
Will Erekat resign? Sure he will - and then he will unresign again, like he's done many times before. From the Matthew Kalman blog, documenting 20 years of Erekat's "resignations:"
Erekat is a joke, and the Arab world knows it.
The incoming Trump administration knows this as well. And this is what terrifies him to make these baseless threats, hoping against hope that the time honored Arab tradition of gaining political leverage by threatening violence still has a little bit of power over stupid Westerners who still believe that these people want peace.
By the way, NATO defines terrorism as "the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence against individuals or property in an attempt to coerce or intimidate governments or societies to achieve political, religious or ideological objectives."
The United States Department of Defense defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of violence or threat of violence to instill fear and coerce governments or societies."
Saeb Erekat and Mahmoud Abbas, with their threats of terrorism, chaos and riots in order to achieve political aims, are terrorists.