Palestinian Prime Minister seeks statehood

Amid diplomatic gridlock:

WEST Bank: At a time when Middle East peace appears as distant as ever, Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad has a new strategy for statehood, one that does not rely on US-backed negotiations.

“It’s a construction agenda, not a destruction agenda. It’s an agenda that is all based on the notion of building positive facts on the ground,” Fayyad told AFP in an interview.

His plan is unaffected by what he sees as the failure of the peace process after 16 years of on-off talks or by Palestinian objections to any resumption without a freeze on growth of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

“We want to make peace, not only just talk about it, but 16 years into this, time and again, we hit this snag of things not moving forward because ultimately it’s up to the occupying force to end the occupation,” he said, referring to failed talks stretching back to the 1993 Oslo accords.

“It’s time to have that basic, fundamental concept revisited.”

He aims to build the institutions of a viable Palestinian state by 2011 regardless of whether any progress is made in talks with Israel. Fayyad insists his programme is not, as Israeli critics allege, a plan to unilaterally declare statehood, but to create “facts on the ground” that will force the international community to demand Palestinian independence. “Contrast that with what Israel is doing,” he adds, referring to the settlements.

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on both sides to return to the negotiating table and said the Palestinians’ insistence on a complete settlement freeze, initially backed by Washington, should not be a precondition for the relaunching of talks suspended during the Gaza war.

Few expect Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give further ground on settlements in the absence of US pressure, but Fayyad says the beauty of his programme is that it can proceed either way. His government is determined to adhere to the Palestinians’ own obligation to halt violence through an ambitious two-year-old West Bank security crackdown involving hundreds of US-trained troops that has won praise from the international community, including Israel.

The US-educated former World Bank economist has also reformed Palestinian finances, securing billions of dollars in pledged international aid and launching development projects across the occupied West Bank.

Ramallah,Monday, AFP