Former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei said on Monday it would be a blunder to resume negotiations with Israel on the Middle East settlement in the present context.
"Many call for the immediate resumption of Palestinian-Israeli talks, including our Russian friends. But it is needed to ask ourselves: have the proper conditions for the resumption of such negotiations been created?" Ahmed Qurei, who had led Palestinian negotiators for years, told an international conference headlined "Middle East 2020: Is the Comprehensive Settlement Possible?" in Jordan.
The conference, organized by Russian News & Information Agency RIA Novosti and the Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy within the framework of the Valdai International Discussion Club, is discussing the Middle East settlement, global energy security, the strengthening the Non-proliferation regime, and a range of other international issues.
The event is to run until December 22.
The former Palestinian prime minister said the Palestinian-Israeli talks, if resumed amid the present situation, would be "just a guise for the implementation of the Israeli unilateral plan," aimed at maintaining the present situation in the region and the further occupation of Palestinian territories.
The issue of settlement construction in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, has been the main obstacle to reviving peace talks with the Palestinians.
Under the internationally agreed roadmap for Middle East peace, Israel is obliged to freeze construction and remove unauthorized outposts built since 2001 from the Palestinian territories.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in late November that construction would be limited in the West Bank, but not in East Jerusalem, which is also under Israeli occupation and which the Palestinians claim to be the capital of an independent Palestinian state. Netanyahu also said construction would resume in the future.
Qurei said Netanyahu's vows to freeze construction were a "performance," as "Palestinian houses and whole districts are being destroyed in Jerusalem every day."
The ex-prime minister said Israel should withdraw from the Palestinian territories only after coordinating the matter with the Palestinians.
He said strained relations between Fatah, which rules the West Bank, and Hamas, which ousted Fatah from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007, hamper the situation.
However, he said, peace between Israel and Palestine remains a strategic goal of the Palestinian authorities, adding the Jordan meeting shows that "there is still light at the end of this long tunnel."
SUWEIMA (Jordan), December 21 (RIA Novosti)
