Palestinian Negotiators: Settlements Mean Everything! Settlements Mean Nothing!

By Published On: November 3, 2011

Erekat.jpg

This just in from the other side of Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat’s mouth:

Settlements, which Palestinian leaders have long pointed to as the wellspring of trouble in the Middle East, and which they cite as a pretext to avoid negotiating, have so little a geographic impact that they can essentially be ignored.

In an interview with Arabic Radio As-Shams cited in Ha’aretz,

Erekat stated … that despite Israel’s continual policy of “occupation and settlement building,” an aerial photograph provided by European sources shows that settlements have been built on approximately 1.1% of the West Bank, thus legitimizing the Palestinian demand for a withdrawal to borders based on the June 4, 1967 borders.

It would have been a good time for the interviewer to ask: Why, then, do you continue to refuse to sit at the negotiating table and talk about it? Why, then, instead of talking peace, do your officials threaten that settlement building will lead you to “take a decision that ‘will change the face of the region and the entire Middle East'”?

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