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Fatah threatens to withdraw from Oslo Agreement

August 14, 2018 at 2:02 pm

The Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee has threatened to withdraw the movement from the Oslo Agreement and its resulting obligations. “We are very close to announcing our withdrawal from all the obligations resulting from Oslo,” Jibril Rajoub told a TV interviewer.

The Oslo Agreement was signed between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel in 1993 as a transitional phase towards peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Its economic terms were signed in 1994.

Under the agreement, the PLO recognised Israel in 1993, but the latter has still not recognised the right of the Palestinians to establish an independent state. In January this year, the Palestinian Central Council asked the Executive Committee of the PLO to “suspend recognition of Israel” in response to the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Council also decided to “stop security coordination with Israel and stop economic relations with it.”

READ: Fatah leader in Israel jails calls for scrapping Oslo Accords

On 4 May, the National Council mandated the Executive Committee to suspend the recognition of Israel until it recognises the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders, cancels the decision to annex East Jerusalem, and stops illegal settlement activity.

The Fatah Central Council is expected to meet on Wednesday in Ramallah to discuss the issue of the implementation of the National Council decisions issued at its last session, including the development of transition mechanisms from the Transitional Authority phase to the State phase in order to give concrete form to the General Assembly vote in 2012, when 138 countries agreed to recognise the membership of Palestine at the UN as an observer state.

#OsloAccords

The Palestinian Central Council is a permanent body of the PLO’s National Council, which includes most of the Palestinian factions apart from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In mid-January, Hamas called on the Palestinian Central Council to move away from Oslo in response to Donald Trump’s decision to acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Sources: The New Khaleej and Anadolu