Senior Fatah official says Oslo project is dead

The Oslo project died a long time ago because Israel prefers continuing with its settlement activities and occupying Palestinian land to reaching peace, a senior al-Fatah official said.

According to the Knspal.net website, Al-Fatah central committee member Tawfiq al-Tirawi issued a statement calling for building a national resistance strategy that involves all the Palestinian political frameworks and draws clear policies to resist the occupation.

Tirawi warned that, “even if the negotiations with Israel lasted for years, the result will be the same because Israel refuses to restore Palestinian rights unless [the Palestinians] possess the power to compel it.”

Tirawi suggested expediting the implementation of the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas due to the mounting international pressure against the Palestinian Authority (PA), which always puts Israel’s interest before the rights of Palestinians.

“The Palestinians totally refuse to give up their unity to escape sanctions. We will move with the reconciliation until the last moment,” he said.

However, Tirawi added that the Palestinians should postpone discussing any of the details until after forming a unity government and holding the elections because discussing them now threatens the reconciliation agreement.

On the security side, Tirawi said the PA security services has never delivered Palestinian citizens to Israel and pointed out that: “The Palestinian security services arrest and try Palestinian citizens to establish security in the West Bank.”

He argued that the PA signed a security agreement with Israel similar to the truce between Hamas and Israel, and stressed that the agreement does not include an extradition clause.

Tirawi is the former head of the PA’s intelligence services in the West Bank and currently heads the investigations into the assassination of former PA Chairman Yasser Arafat.