Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Shaath has said that after over twenty years of “fruitless” Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, now is the time to end the American monopoly over sponsorship of the peace process.

Shaath told the Italian news agency AGI that it is time for six or seven countries to sponsor the peace process, as was the case with the international negotiations with Iran. He stressed that the same factors adopted in those negotiations must be applied to the peace process, including the imposition of economic sanctions and an international framework for negotiations, which must be held within a determined time frame. He also proposed reaching an agreement to stop all nuclear activity, or in Israel’s case, an agreement to stop all settlement activity.

“There must be a sponsorship by major countries and there must be a defined goal for the negotiations, i.e. ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories based on the 1967 borders, including East Jerusalem, and determining a time frame to end negotiations and reach an agreement to ending settlements and releasing prisoners,” he added.

Shaath stressed that “the negotiations over the past years, which were dominated by the US, did not achieve anything. What were the sanctions imposed on Israel that would motivate it to reach an agreement? There is an Israeli-American attempt to marginalise the Palestinian cause. This is completely unacceptable. We will not return, under any circumstance, to the form of past negotiations.”

(MEMO)