Amanpour: Why would you boycott an event that is designed simply to explore, remember it's called a workshop, the opportunity to give billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars, $50 billion to your people and the Palestinian Authority?
Shtayyeh: The figures are so exaggerated to the extent that we don't believe it, first.
Secondly, this economic workshop is totally diverse from any dimension. Economic problem in Palestine has nothing to do with the economic policy of anybody. The economic problem here, the crisis is the Israeli measures that are forced on us and the financial war that has been declared by the American administration on the Palestinian people, on the United Nations association for the Palestinian refugees. so the issue is not an economic issue.
The Palestinians are hoping for sovereign state. The issue is not economic.
We have seen this before.
Secretary Shultz was here in 1983. He came to say solving the problem has to do with improving the living conditions of the Palestinians.
This didn't materialize.
Shultz`s efforts suffered a setback Friday when a group of prominent Palestinians stayed away from a scheduled meeting with him.
Shultz, in a gesture to the Palestinians, traveled to the American Colony Hotel in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem in the hope that they would ignore orders by the Palestine Liberation Organization not to attend the meeting.
When the Palestinians failed to appear, Shultz read a four-page ''statement to Palestinians'' in front of television cameras.
Then John Kerry promised the Palestinians $4 billion. This has never materialized.Kerry proposed a "Bahrain lite" plan in 2013.The person whose task was to implement this economic plan was Tony Blair, representing the Quartet.
Palestinians refused to cooperate with Blair, claiming he was too pro-Israel. He tried hard to improve their economic situation and they didn't want anything to do with him.
Now they are blaming the world for their own intransigence!
Speaking of Kerry, Shtayyeh wrote an op-ed in the New York Times blaming Israel for the failure of Kerry's attempt to find peace. This is a complete lie - the Israelis accepted the US framework for peace and Shtayyeh's team rejected it wholesale. (Of course, the NYT didn't fact check Shtayyeh's op-ed, claiming that Israel didn't do its promised partial freeze on settlement building and releasing prisoners.)
Amanpour: You're basically saying that if I get you right, there's no point having the cart before the horse, that promises and ideas of money and investment will not work outside a political framework?
Shtayyeh: Exactly. You are right. The whole exercise that has been there, what has been presented, it's simply a cut and paste issue [of previous plans.] We have seen it in several documents but the issue is not about fixed issues. This is like a desktop work. This is somebody who is totally divorced from reality.
I'm not a fan of Christiane Amanpour, but she started off the interview with an excellent question - and failed to follow through and catch Shtayyeh on his lies.