Rezqa: Obama couldn’t force IOA to freeze settlements

[ 15/08/2009 - 03:43 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)--

Yousuf Rezqa, the political advisor of PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, stressed on Saturday that his government attaches no hope to the US efforts for peace, explaining that US president Barack Obama doesn’t have the power to force the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) to freeze settlement activities in occupied Palestine.

“What the US administration wants is normalization of ties between the Hebrew state and the Arab countries”, asserted Rezqa in a written statement he issued in this regard, pointing out that Obama’s administration couldn’t even lower the level of demands of the Zionist right.

He opined that the issue of delineating borders aims, in the first place, to reach nominal solution to the issue of the Palestinian refugees on the basis that the refugees should settle in the delineated Palestinian state, which is Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.

In this regard, Rezqa sent a clear message to the Arab countries not to take any further step towards normalization before the IOA accepts to withdraw from all Arab lands occupied in 1967.

“A number of Arab countries had made big concessions in the past as they normalized ties with the Zionist entity on promises that even the minimum level of them wasn’t carried out, and now they want to normalize with the Israelis in response to the American demands although the US plan doesn’t specify a timetable for Israeli withdrawal from the 1967-occupied Arab and Palestinian lands”, Rezqa underscored.

“Obama's peace plan in which he called on the Arab countries to collectively normalize ties with Israel, and to open the Arab air space before Israeli planes without any practical step from the Israeli side is indeed meaningless” the Palestinian official underlined.