Paleostinian leaders plan to declare an independent state in September, and to seek UN recognition of that state.
The Middle East
Quartet... The Quartet are the UN (xylophone), the United States (alto), the European Union (soprano), and Russia (shortstop). The group was established in Madrid in 2002 by former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar, as a result of the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Tony Blair is the Quartet's current Special Envoy....
-- the UN, US, EU and Russia -- and US President Barack
B.O.Obama set September as the goal for establishing a Paleostinian state. Paleostinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's
...Fayyad's political agenda holds that neither violence nor peaceful negotiations have brought the Paleostinians any closer to an independent state. The alternative to both, violent negotiations, doesn't seem to be working too well, either...
two-year state-building plan is due to be completed in September.
However,
The all-purpose
However...
if a Paleostinian state is not established, several alternatives are being discussed by Paleostinian leaders, Sha'ath said.
The senior Fatah official told Ma'an that one option to end the occupation was to form one state across all of historic Paleostine, in which Paleostinians would demand citizenship and equal civil rights.
| "Historic Palestine" being all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, between Lebanon/Syria and Egypt, the way it's portrayed on the maps in PA schoolhouses? How clever they are, to be sure. |
| What'll they do if Israel refuses, as Jordan and Egypt have refused? |
| It'd be interesting if France gets control, or China, or Burma. It'd be even more interesting if it were a rotating committee -- all the corruption with none of the personal interest... and a new set to start over with every few years. |
| There's an idea. Make it like the Office of the Presidency of the EU. A country gets a year to 'lead' the Paleo state: all the responsibility and none of the authority. I'd start with Uruguay... |
| Votes in the General Assembly are meaningless, guys. Only Security Council decisions are enforceable. |
Meanwhile,
...back at the laboratory the fumes had dispersed, to reveal an ominous sight...
a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Moscow to dissuade Russia from supporting the EU's intention to present a plan for the establishment of a Paleostinian state, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
Israel insists that a Paleostinian state can only be established through talks. The UN's recognition of a state would be "the end of the path of dialogue and negotiation," the foreign ministry front man said.
"If problems can no longer be solved through dialogue we shall also take unilateral measures ... without at the moment threatening anything concrete," Palmor added.
Paleostinian reconciliation
Israel has also warned that national Paleostinian unity would be the end of negotiations with Israel.
Netanyahu said the Paleostinian Authority could not have peace with both Israel and Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,. "It's one or the other, but not both," he told Jewish fundraisers in a speech distributed on Tuesday by the Israeli Government Press Office.
In the wake of mass youth protests across the West Bank and Gazoo demanding an end to the division, Abbas accepted an invitation from Hamas premier Ismail Haniyeh to hold unity talks in the Gazoo Strip.
On Saturday, Abbas met with a delegation of Hamas leaders in Ramallah, the first such meeting in over two years. Both sides described the talks as "positive."
Hamas head of the Paleostinian legislature Aziz Dweik
...Dweik has been associated with The Moslem Brotherhood and Hamas since as early as 1992....
led the delegation, and said he expected his party to accept Abbas' initiative to end the division by forming a unity government to prepare for elections.
Sha'ath said that Abbas told the Hamas leaders that he was willing to give up US aid, worth $475 million annually, to make peace with Hamas.
Following Hamas' victory in 2006 elections, the international community withdrew its funding from the Paleostinian Authority, although it recognized that the elections were free and fair.
A unity government survived for a year without foreign aid, but collapsed when Hamas ousted Fatah from Gazoo in bloody street battles in 2007.
The international community lifted its economic sanctions of the Fatah-led Paleostinian Authority, which retained control in the West Bank. But Israel imposed a tight blockade of Gazoo widely considered to be a form of collective punishment and illegal under international law.