Erekat: Netanyahu’s programme strengthens apartheid and occupation

The Secretary of the PLO’s Executive Committee Saeb Erekat has said that the conditions dictated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order for Israel to re-open negotiations with the Palestinian Authority (PA) would constitute “actions that would destroy the two-state solution and impose a perpetual occupation.”

In a press statement on Wednesday, Erekat said that “Netanyahu is seeking to destroy the two-state solution based on the June 1967 borders as he insists on conditions such as keeping both Jerusalem and the refugees outside of the negotiations, keeping the army of the occupation along the Jordan River and in the central mountains, promoting the strategy of a Palestinian people without power and an occupation without a cost, and keeping the Gaza Strip away from the Palestinian context in order to destroy the Palestinian national project.”

Erekat stressed the need to stop the settlements, to release the fourth set of Palestinian prisoners and the importance of land demarcation on the basis of the borders of June 1967.

He said that the Israeli government came “to bury the two-state solution” and that its real programme is an “apartheid” that came to occupy the land of Palestine, pointing to President Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks about the Palestinian state as “a demilitarised one, without borders, and with neither Jerusalem nor refugees.”

In another context, Erekat noted that a committee will be formed to “prepare a report to provide to the Palestinian National Council” that will emphasise “the continuation of bilateral consultations”. He also stressed the need for consensus and agreement during the regular session of the Palestinian National Council scheduled on 14 and 15 September, and the need to undertake set goals with regard to the completion of the political programme for the next phase.