by Gil Ronen
PA Prime Minister Hamdallah tells WaPo: 'We count on the United States and are sure they will deliver.'
Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah broadly hinted in a Washington Post interview Monday that the US has promised the PA to renew pressure on Israel to negotiate the giveaway of its land, once the nuclear deal with Iran is signed.
Hamdallah sat down in his Ramallah office with The Post’s Lally Weymouth and told her: “We hope negotiations will be resumed, but within a new framework. We need a time limit for the Israeli withdrawal from our territories and a date for the establishment of the [Palestinian] state — the leadership in Palestine has put the date as the end of 2017.”
Hamdallah spoke approvingly of a French initiative for peace between Jews and Arabs, which he said was drafted in coordination with the United States, and which sets a time limit for Israeli retreat from Judea and Samaria. “This UN resolution can be issued which would set a time to end the occupation and establish a state along the ’67 borders,” he explained. “If this is issued, I’m sure we can go back to negotiations.
“Whether it is through the French initiative, or any other, we [want to] get a guarantee for a time limit for the Israeli withdrawal and the establishment of the state and a freeze of settlement activities.”
'We need help'
Asked if he thinks the “Palestinian state can be imposed from the outside,” Hamdallah said no. “We need negotiations between us and the Israelis sponsored by the United States, by the UN, by the [European Union].
“We need outside intervention from the UN, from the superpowers, from the United States,” he added unabashedly. “Once there is a resolution, whether the UN asking for Israeli withdrawal and for the establishment of the state, this has to be guaranteed by the superpowers. Otherwise, it will be just a paper. We hope that the United States’ intervention can help us.”
"We have had certain assurances from the United States that after the Iranian deal, they will resume negotiations between us and the Israelis,” he said at a later point in the interview. “We count on the [United] States and are sure they will deliver.”
Weymouth asked: “Is your sense that the Obama administration might either not veto or might support the French resolution in the Security Council?”
Hamdallah replied: “What we hear is that there is coordination between the French and the [United] States.”
Gil Ronen
Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/196109#.VWx7dEazd-8
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