RAMALLAH, Tuesday, October 30, 2018 (WAFA) - Saeb Erekat, Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said Tuesday that severing ties with Israel as called for by the Palestinian Central Council on Monday night will be done gradually.
He said that President Mahmoud Abbas is going to convene later in the afternoon a meeting of the Higher National Committee, which was set up to implement the decisions of the Central Council at the end of its 30th session held in Ramallah on Sunday and Monday.
Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio that the Higher National Committee consists of members of the PLO Executive Committees and Fatah Central Committee as well as nationalist, security and government figures due to the seriousness of the situation and the need to act quickly to implement these decisions.
Erekat added that the 30th session of the Central Council is the most important meeting in which crucial decisions were made regarding the United States and Israel and with regard to Palestinian reconciliation, pointing out the seriousness of implementing the decisions since the Executive Committee and President Abbas are the implementing party.
Regarding the decisions on Israel and the implementation mechanism, Erekat said that there are 69 issues in the Palestinian-Israeli relations, which resulted in eight signed agreements with Israel from 1993 until 1999, and the committee is the one charged with taking into account all these issues and points.
He stressed that the Higher Committee will start implementing all these decisions gradually, "and there will be no jumping in the air because the issues are not slogans."
Erekat said that the committee will begin implementing all these decisions without exception and in all areas. This will be done gradually, stressing that the meeting of the Higher Committee set up by the president hours after the end of the work of the Central Council shows the absolute seriousness the president attaches to starting implementation.
Regarding intra-Palestinian reconciliation and ending the division, Erekat said that there is a Zionist American plot based on separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank and Jerusalem in order to kill the Palestinian national project, which is the main point of the racist Israeli Nation-State law, as well as to kill the possibility of establishing an independent Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 borders.
He said that the leadership seeks to preserve the Gaza Strip as a part of the Palestinian national territory and as an integral part of the territory of the occupied Palestinian state. However, the methods used by Hamas indicate that it is going towards separation.
Erekat called on Hamas movement to implement the Cairo agreement signed last year to achieve reconciliation, stressing that the point and focus of US President Donald Trump now is to separate the West Bank from the Gaza Strip through implementing the “deal of the century.”
Regarding the announcement by the new Brazilian president of his intention to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Erekat said that we will make every effort to prevent this from happening in cooperation with the Arab brothers and friends in Latin America and the Caribbean. He called on the Arab countries to implement the decision taken by the Arab Summit in 1980 to sever relations with any country that moves its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, adding that it is time for a decisive Arab position on the issue.
He said the election of the far-right president in Brazil is part of the Trump project, which also seeks to divide the European countries and destroy the European Union because he wants to see the rise of right-wing nationalism in Europe and the world should be aware of everything he does.
M.K.
