Palestinian leadership warns US concessions to Netanyahu are destroying talks
Palestinian leaders have warned that the US role as an honest broker in Middle East peace talks has been severely undermined by President Barack Obama's concessions to Israel's ruling coalition.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, heads to Washington for talks meant to resurrect the peace process, which has been frozen since a 10-month moratorium on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank expired in September. Mr Netanyahu has secured assurances of major concessions to revive the moratorium.
The US has urged Mr Netanyahu to implement a further one-off moratorium of two months. In exchange it has reportedly promised to call for no further extensions, to veto any UN resolution critical of Israel in the next year and - most contentiously - to allow a continued Israeli military presence in parts of the West Bank bordering Jordan.
Mr Netanyahu has held out, hoping for more, but the proposal as it stands has already prompted apoplexy among Palestinians who argue that it would perpetuate rather than end Israel's 43-year occupation of the West Bank.
Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian negotiator told The Daily Telegraph that the proposal, which would allow Israel to station its forces in an independent Palestinian state, indicated that Mr Obama had abandoned his policy of pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu in favour of a "game of seduction".
Mr Shaath denounced the idea as "unbelievably unbelievable", said the Palestinians would reject it and demanded an end to US interference in the peace talks.
"We don't want American intervention, thanks very much," he said in an interview. "The whole negotiation conducted by Obama is ridiculous and counterproductive as well as being contrary to international law"
Mr Shaath, who is considered a moderate pro-American, said such a strategy showed Mr Obama had "given up" on the peace process in exchange for a policy of appeasement that would doom hopes for a negotiated peace settlement.
"If he persists in the seduction of Netanyahu, he has lost and we have lost," he said. "This game of seduction only acts as an incentive to Netanyahu to be even more assertive and ask for more."
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has threatened to pull out of the two-month-old peace talks altogether unless Israel imposes a total settlement freeze until agreement on the borders of a future Palestinian state is reached.
Mr Obama's strategy of mollification could tip him over the edge, Mr Shaath said.
"There is an increasing malaise in the Palestinian ranks," he said. "The Palestinian leadership is totally convinced that they have been victims of a game of deception. That feeling has pushed Palestinians to discuss alternatives."
If the peace talks collapse, the Palestinians would pursue a series of successive strategies, he said.
These would involve first seeking UN recognition of Palestinian statehood. Failing that, an application to place the West Bank and Gaza under international trusteeship would be made. As a last resort, the Palestinian Authority would be dissolved altogether and a campaign of non-violent resistance launched against a fully-reinstated Israeli occupation.
"The situation is totally untenable," he said. "We cannot stay in Netanyahu's box, waiting for Godot to shower manna on us.
"The endgame is to say we have failed and therefore we abdicate. You are the occupying power, so you take the responsibility and we will resist the occupation."
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