Recognising Israel should not be required to stand in election, says Fayyad

Former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has said that recognising Israel and respecting previous deals with the occupation state should not be requirements to stand in elections or join the Palestinian government, Al-Watan Voice reported on Wednesday. Fayyad pointed out that these were the conditions set by the Middle East Quartet for any Palestinian factions or individuals.

He made his comment during an online conference organised by the Brookings Institute. “Do the Quartet and the international community put similar conditions on any segment of the Israeli political system?” Fayyad asked.

Highlighting the danger in the repeated attempts to impose such “restrictions”, he said, harms the credibility of the electoral process and cuts short any “serious” effort to end the Palestinian political division. The former prime minister stressed that ending this division should precede any future Palestinian political process. Moreover, he insisted that recognising Palestinian rights, including the right to return and the right to self-determination, should also come before any political process.

“Without delay, we have to seek full partnership in any pluralistic political system that accepts plurality of visions and actions under the PLO’s umbrella as the sole representative of the Palestinians around the world,” added Fayyad.

The new US administration, he concluded, should not return to the point prior to Trump’s administration because the peace process reached a dead end long before that. “And that was what made Trump’s mission to kill the peace process very easy.”

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