According to Haaretz, Erekat also said in the interview that: “Our position is that the key to direct negotiations is in the hand of Mr. Netanyahu … The minute he stops settlement activities including natural growth in Jerusalem, the minute he agrees to go to permanent status talks, where we left them in December 2008, we’ll have direct talks … The Israelis have a choice, settlements or peace. They can’t have both”. These remarks are reported here.

On Netanyahu’s choice of ministers, Avnery wrote that “All these appointments look like the desperate efforts of a cynical politician who does not care about anything other than returning to power, and then quickly putting together a cabinet, whatever its composition, paying any price to any party prepared to join him, sacrificing even the most vital interests of the state”.

The worst problem, Avnery stated, is in the political field, “Because there the unpreparedness of Netanyahu meets the overpreparedness of Obama. Obama has a plan for the restructuring of the Middle East, and one of its elements is an Israeli-Palestinian peace based on ‘Two States for Two Peoples’. Netanyahu argues that he is not in a position to respond, because he has no plan of his own yet. After all, he is quite new in office. Now he is working on such a plan. Very soon, in a week, or a month, or a year, he will have a plan, a real plan, and he will present it to Obama. Or course, Netanyahu has a plan. It consists of one word, which he learned from his mentor, Yitzhak Shamir: ‘NO’. Or, more precisely, NO NO NO – the three no’s of the Israeli Khartoum: No peace, No withdrawal, No negotiations. (It will be remembered that the 1967 Arab summit conference in Khartoum, right after the Six-day War, adopted a similar resolution.) The ‘plan’ which he is working on does not really concern the essence of this policy, but only the packaging. How to present to Obama something that will not sound like ‘no’, but rather like ‘yes, but’ … As a taster for the ‘plan’, Netanyahu has already presented one of its ingredients: the demand that the Palestinians and other Arabs must recognize Israel as ‘the State of the Jewish People’.”

Now, here, Avnery makes a distinction: “Most of the media in Israel and abroad have distorted this demand and reported that Netanyahu requires the recognition of Israel as a ‘Jewish State’. Either from ignorance or laziness, they obliterated the important difference between the two formulas. This difference is immense. A ‘Jewish State’ is one thing, a ‘State of the Jewish People’ is something radically different“.

Avnery explains what he sees as the distinction — though not everybody will agree with him: “A ‘Jewish State’ can mean a state with a majority of citizens who define themselves as Jews and/or a state whose main language is Hebrew, whose main culture is Jewish, whose weekly rest day is Saturday, which serves only Kosher food in the Knesset cafeteria etc. A ‘State of the Jewish People’ is a completely different story. It means that the state belongs not only to its citizens, but to something that is called ‘the Jewish People’ – something that exists both inside and outside of the country. That can have wide-ranging implications. For instance: the abrogation of the citizenship of non-Jews, as proposed by Lieberman. Or the conferring of Israeli citizenship on all the Jews in the world, whether they want it or not. The first question that arises is: what does ‘the Jewish People’ mean? The term ‘people’ – ‘am‘ in Hebrew … – has no accepted precise definition. Generally it is taken to mean a group of human beings who live in a specific territory and speak a specific language. The ‘Jewish People’ is not like that. Two hundred years ago it was clear that the Jews were a religious community dispersed throughout the world and united by religious beliefs and myths (including the belief in a common ancestry). The Zionists were determined to change this self-perception. ‘We are a people, one people’, Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote … The idea of ‘the State of the Jewish People’ is decidedly anti-Zionist. Herzl did not dream of a situation in which a Jewish State and a Jewish Diaspora would coexist. According to his plan, all the Jews who wish to remain Jews would immigrate to their state. The Jews who prefer to live outside the state would stop being Jews and be absorbed into their host nations, finally becoming real Germans, Britons and Frenchmen. The vision of the ‘Visionary of the State’ (as he is officially designated in Israel) was supposed, when put into practice, to bring about the disappearance of the Jewish Diaspora … David Ben-Gurion was a partner to this vision. He stated that a Jew who does not immigrate to Israel is not a Zionist and should not enjoy any rights in Israel, except the right to immigrate there. He demanded the dismantling of the Zionist organization, seeing in it only the ’scaffolding’ for building the state. Once the state has been set up, he thought quite rightly, the scaffolding should be discarded”.

OK, for what that’s worth. Now, Avnery turns back to Netanyahu, and writes that: “Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as ‘the State of the Jewish People’ is ridiculous, even as a tactic for preventing peace. A state recognizes a state, not its ideology or political regime. Nobody recognizes Saudi Arabia, the homeland of the Hajj, as ‘the State of the Muslim Umma’ (the community of believers.) Moreover, the demand puts the Jews all over the world in an impossible position. If the Palestinians have to recognize Israel as ‘the State of the Jewish People’, then all the governments in the world must do the same. The United States, for example. That means that the Jewish US citizens Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod, Obama’s closest advisors, are officially represented by the government of Israel. The same goes for the Jews in Russia, the UK and France. Even if Mahmoud Abbas were persuaded to accept this demand – and thereby indirectly put in doubt the citizenship of a million and a half Arabs in Israel – I would oppose this strenuously. More than that, I would consider it an unfriendly act”.

Now, it’s important to note that the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel are prime movers behind the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to make a calm, rational consideration of this demand, which has been made by the last two Israeli governments — once before the start of the Annapolis process, in November 2007, and now again recently.

Advice, like Avnery’s, from the Israeli “left” (which has a scattered and varied criticism of the demand, and multiple positions of their own), has most probably only bolstered and reinforced this rigid PA position. But it is far from clear that the interests of the Israeli Arabs coincide with the interests of those Palestinians who will only have the choice of being citizens of some future Palestinian state.

The PA has chosen to support the Israeli Arab position, as a purely political calculation — whether as payback, or as a deposit on some future reciprocal support (or both). However, this political calculation has only let Palestinians (in the West Bank and Gaza at least) off the hook. They haven’t needed to take the time to reflect on what this really might imply for them.

And, if they really were afraid that recognition of Israel’s “Jewishness” in one or another forms would result in either immediate ethnic cleansing (expulsion en masse of Israel’s Arab citizens as well as Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem), as well as of total barring of the return of any or all Palestinian refugees, they could have asked for guarantees from the international community that it would not happen. And they would have gotten such guarantees, which would be worth a lot more than the puffed-up pride they have now in being stubborn and resisting a critical examination of the demand

In any case, Avnery wrote that “The character of the State of Israel must be decided by the citizens of Israel (who hold a wide range of opinions about this matter). Pending before the Israeli courts is an application by dozens of Israeli patriots, including myself, who demand that the state recognize the ‘Israeli nation’. We request the court to instruct the government to register us in the official Population Registration, under the heading ‘nation’, as Israelis. The government refuses adamantly and insists that our nation is Jewish. I ask Mahmoud Abbas, Obama and everyone else who is not an Israeli citizen not to interfere in this domestic debate. Netanyahu knows, of course, that nobody will take his demand seriously. It is quite obviously just another device to avoid serious peace negotiations. If he is compelled to drop it, it will not be long before he comes up with another” …

Along the lines of Avnery’s argument, the Palestinian editor and co-Chairman of IPCRI (the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information) Hanna Siniora proposed the following formula, and asked for reaction: “What about this: Israel is for the Israelis — and in this way we do not disenfranchise miniorities. How do you receive that formula?”

Siniora was speaking in answer to a question from an Israeli (in the audience at IPCRI’s 27 April discussion of the marked expansion in Israeli settlements in the West Bank since the start of the Annapolis process in November 2007) about PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ statement that he would refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish State. The Israeli questioner did not respond.

Earlier on the same day, 27 April, the Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel held its annual General Membership meeting at the King David Hotel in West Jerusalem, and invited Palestinian negotiator Sa’eb Erekat to address the group after the business of hearing the treasurer’s report and the election of a new committee was over. One of the journalists asked Erekat, “What is the problem in accepting Israel as a Jewish State”.

Erekat was, in fact, prepared for the question. “Israel can call itself anything it wants … but when you signed the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, you did not put this as a precondition”.

Then, Erekat pulled out one (1) copy of a letter which he said was a reply from U.S. President Truman to a group of American Jewish leaders who had written, Erekat said, on 14 May 1948 (the eve of — or with the time difference, perhaps even after the proclamation of the State of Israel which happened at midnight) asking that the U.S. should accept Israel, Erekat said, apparently correcting himself as he spoke, as “the state of the Jewish people, or as the Jewish state”.

According to Erekat, the American Jewish leaders proposed this formula: “The U.S. recognizes the provisional government as the de facto government of the new Jewish State.”

But what happened, again according to Erekat, was that President Truman crossed out the words,
“the new Jewish State”, and replaced them with the words, “the State of Israel”.

That’s it, Erekat said, proof that even the United States did not recognize Israel as a “Jewish State”. To conclude his argument, Erekat, said: “Check the UN Charter, and see if the Vatican is recognized as a Catholic State”.

Well, first of all, the Vatican is represented by an observer delegation in the United Nations, and it has not been admitted to membership, so it’s identity has not been subject to any agreement or approval, as happens when states are admitted as full UN members.

And, second of all, it seemed to me that all Harry Truman was doing when he crossed out one phrase and replaced it with another, “the State of Israel”, was correcting the identification of the new entity as it was announced.

A couple of years ago, Uri Avnery, writing on this subject, said that what the name of the State of Israel would be, was not known in advance. In fact, it was not known until right up to the actual announcement.

The New York Times’ Isabelle Kershner, who was present at the FPA meeting, managed to get a look at the actual letter that Erekat gave to the outgoing chairman (Steve Gutkin of AP), and she later also took issue with Erekat’s argument [despite the very chummy "Hi Isabelle" that Erekat said when she asked a question on another subject at the FPA briefing ].

In a piece that had a few non-sequitors in its editing, Isabelle wrote that “Palestinian negotiators have refused to recognize Israel’s Jewish character in the past, contending that it would negate the Palestinian refugees’ demand for the right to return to their former homes and would be detrimental to the status of Israel’s Arab citizens, who make up a fifth of the population. In an attempt to bolster the Palestinian argument, Mr. Erekat on Monday produced a copy of a letter signed by President Harry Truman on May 14, 1948. In its original form, it recognizes the provisional government of the new Jewish state, but the typed words ‘Jewish state’ in the second paragraph have been crossed out and replaced with the handwritten words ‘State of Israel’.
Shlomo Avineri, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Mr. Erekat was misinterpreting the American president’s intention. According to Mr. Avineri, the Truman letter had been prepared hours before Israel declared its independence, before the new country had chosen its name. It was later corrected by a Truman adviser, Clark Clifford, after the declaration of independence to call the country by its name, not to refute its Jewish character, Mr. Avineri said”. This article can be read in full here.

At that moment, there was a cut in electrical power for the second time in a few minutes.
As everyone laughed, Erekat joked: “Even the electricity is interrupted”

“It should have been different”, Erekat continued, “today should have been different…but Palestinians are still Palestinians…So, what are you going to do with us?”

Erekat agreed that the current impasse in negotiations with Israel “cannot stand”.

He was speaking as some Palestinians openly speculated that the end to the negotiations with Israel are near – and saying that this is what prompted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to make an unusual call for renewed national dialogue, as if he might have dropped his preconditions, starting with the return of Gaza to Ramallah’s control, nearly one year after Hamas fighters routed Fatah forces.

But, Erekat said in response to one journalist’s question, “Abu Mazen did deliver an initiative yesterday, but it was according to the Yemeni initiative that was launched in the Damascus summit last year. Everybody knows it begins with Hamas rescinding its coup. Everyone knows, also, that Hamas won the last elections – but they have since failed – big time…When was the last time you read the Yemeni initiative? Abbas said [Wednesday evening] that he wants to see the Yemeni initiative implemented. He was very clear”.

In any case, Erekat added, anticipating other unspoken questions, any eventual outcome of negotiations with the Israelis “will be put to a referendum. If Palestinians say ‘yes’, we will implement it from our side. If the Palestinians say ‘no’, then Abu Mazen will say goodbye”.

Erekat said that the negotiations with an Israeli team led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are “serious … and, .for the first time, we have opened all files, and we are now at the prisoners’ file…We are trying to revive hope, but the choice is Israel’s … We have defined the end game, which is to end the 1967 Israeli occupation according to the Road Map. We have serious negotiations for the first time in seven years, and we are taking a needs-oriented approach”.

What is that, one journalist asked? “You know, my needs, their needs. What do you want to know? I’m not going to show you the map”, Erekat replied.

Erekat pointed out that “in Annapolis, we chose a trilateral arrangement, in which there would be a ‘judge’, an American ‘judge’ (on behalf of the Quartet) … The question here is for the Americans and the other members of the Quartet: Isn’t it time for the ‘judge’ to speak out? There is no such thing as a secret ‘judge’…Since Annapolis there have been more settlements, more incursions, more faits accomplis. Now, at a time we are trying to revive hopes for peace, this American ‘judge’ should come out in the open and say who’s complying and who’s not – giving just the truth, just the facts. Otherwise, is it a cover-up for Israeli activities? This cannot stand any more”.

“I really urge the Americans to introduce their comments”, Erekat continued. Decisions on Jerusalem, security, borders, refugees and so on are required from both Israelis and Palestinians. You as journalists should be able to call up and ask the ‘judge’ who is complying on this matter or that. This current situation cannot continue”.

A journalist then asked: “You are saying the Israelis are not serious, so what are you waiting for?” Erekat replied “There is nothing wrong with negotiations, since Adam and Eve. Negotiations are not the end, they are the means. I don’t want to stop negotiations, I want to stop Israeli settlements, I want to stop Israeli incursions. And I want the international community to help us make Israel comply with its obligations under the Road Map”.

Erekat clearly put more hope in the evaluation being made by Lt. General William Fraser – appointed as Mr. Road Map Implementation by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice just before President Bush’s visit to the region in January – than in comments made by leading contenders for the Democratic Party nomination to be the next U.S. President.

On Barak Obama: “I thought he was a man of change…but when he says that Jerusalem will remain the undivided capital of Israel, I say to him, ‘Sir, you are closing all doors to peace’. I don’t care if he’s pro-Israeli or not. My concern is about those who are pro-peace or not. U.S. Policy hasn’t changed since the ‘70’s. The U.S. Embassy is still in Tel Aviv, and the U.S. policy still says that Jerusalem is occupied”.

To Hilary Clinton: “If someone loses his home, his schools, his livelihood, his parents in New York, what do you call it? We call it a catastrophe – and we have here a catastrophe that has lasted 60 years”.

“Now is the time for decisions”, veteran Palestinian negotiator Sa’eb Erekat said at a press conference at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem on Wednesday, where he was invited to speak to the members of the Foreign Press Association in Israel. 

 Erekat is an expert at speaking in short sound bytes.

 “We like to play with words”, Erekat told the journalists, though clearly referring to various statements made only by Israeli leaders to the effect that, with luck, what might happen this year would be more a “framework”, or “parameters”, of an agreement, rather than the actual formation of an independent Palestinian state. 

Erekat seemed to be indicating that it didn’t matter what the result would be called.

“Signing agreements doesn’t make peace … The only lasting agreements are the fair ones”, Erekat said.

He said he was under oath not to speak about or disclose the details of the current negotiations.  “What I said is that what needs to be done is to take decisions … What is needed is decisions, not negotiations”, Erekat said.

“I’ve never seen the Palestinians and Israelis closer to achieving an end game”, Erekat said.  And, “it’s the Palestinians and Israelis who must make the necessary decisions”, and not a third party, he said.   He did add that “U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is coming in two weeks, and American diplomats are on the phone every hour.  But now it’s the moment of truth — It’s either settlements or peace”. 

“President Bush has no right to discuss with Israel ceding some territory in Palestine.  He can cede New Mexico, maybe, but not here”, Erekat said.  “One day in 1995, Jordan decided to cede 29,000 square kilometers [to Israel, in the context of a peace treaty].  We’re different”.

“Without giving me the percentage of [territorial] swaps”, Erekat said, “there will be no agreement”.  But “with the percentage of agreed swaps, you’ll get an agreement in three months”, Erekat said.  “The end game is defined and the rest is all technicalities, and if you settle them, you’ll get a treaty of 1,000 pages in three months”.

“Some Palestinian leaders are throwing options in the air, Kosovo has unilaterally declared independence, and so will we, etc.  But we are not playing with that”, Erekat said.  “We have been elected to achieve something – we have a mandate – and if we fail to deliver, then what?  Shouldn’t we tell our people the truth?” 

Erekat added: “I don’t want to export fear, but if we fail to deliver in 2008, we will disappear.  There’ll be a big question about the ability of the Palestinian Authority to survive.  I mean me, and what I represent.  And the impact will not be confined to the Palestinians and the Israelis – watch the region!”

Asked to explain what negotiations are taking place with the Egyptians, and with the Yemenis, Erekat replied: “Yesterday Egypt talked with the Israelis, and today with the Palestinian factions…What the Egypt is trying to do is upon the personal request of  President Abbas to President Mubarak.  Egypt has contacts with all the Palestinian factions and the Israelis. Egypt wants ‘tahdiya’ with guarantees that no one will break it.  As far as Yemen is concerned, Hamas must go back to what things were…Hamas must rescind their coup d’etat”. 

Erekat said: “The coup d’etat in Gaza is the worst thing that happened to us since 1967.  Hamas is a Palestinian party, like me.  The difference is that we believe we can achieve peace through negotiations, but Hamas says No, you cannot … Hamas said, since we won the elections, we want to change the previously-negotiated agreements … But anyone in government must accept all the obligations … Any Palestinian government has to be on board with the program: negotiations for peace, based on a two-state solution, aiming at a signed agreement”.

Erekat rejected all the efforts by journalists to arrive at a precise definition of the meaning of “tahdiya” in English  — he said it’s not détente, not cooling off, not cease-fire, not calm, not a truce .

But what should happen, he said, is “a mutual ‘tahdiya‘ between two sides, to stop shooting, everybody is to stop shooting”.

He added: “We accepted the Yemeni proposal, as we accepted the Mecca agreement, and the Egyptian-Cairo agreement, and we said there is no military solution.  We need agreement with Israel, and we will put it to a national public referendum”. 

In response to a question from the BBC Arabic TV, asking whether the problem in the negotiations might, maybe, be with the negotiations team itself, Erekat replied:  “I hear this a lot, by the way.  I’ve resigned, I quit. 46 times.  But the problem is not personalised.  I don’t want my son to grow up to be a suicide bomber.  We’ve established the best negotiations team in the Middle East, our (PLO) Negotiations Support Unit, which has expert advisers from all over the world who assist in developing negotiating positions… In 1992, I made more money as a journalist and university professor than I have in all the years since…and I’m not here for journalists to ask me such questions”. 

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s late leader, Yasser Arafat, proclaimed a Palestinian State in 1988 on the basis of UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which stated that the British Mandate of Palestine should be divided into two parts, one Jewish and one Arab.

The JPost says that “A senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office said in response that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insists that the Palestinians recognize Israel’s Jewish identity, as a condition for Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state … Meanwhile, Olmert told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the peace conference scheduled to take place in Annapolis in late November would last for a single day. The conference, the prime minister said, would serve to launch negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and be a one-time event geared towards gaining international support for the talks”.

The JPost report is here.

Haaretz is reporting that Olmert said Monday: “We won’t hold negotiations on our existence as a Jewish state, this is a launching point for all negotiations … We won’t have an argument with anyone in the world over the fact that Israel is a state of the Jewish people. Whoever does not accept this cannot hold any negotiations with me. This has been made clear to the Palestinians and the Americans. I have no doubt that Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas] and [PA premier Salam] Fayad are committed to prior agreements and want to make peace with Israel as a Jewish state,” Olmert continued … Olmert told the gathering that immediately at the start of negotiations following the summit, Israel will set a precondition that the Palestinians recognize Israel as ‘a Jewish state’. ‘I do not intend to compromise in any way over the issue of the Jewish state’, Olmert said, thereby accepting the position of Livni and Barak. ‘This will be a condition for our recognition of a Palestinian state’. Olmert said he raised the importance of this issue during his talks with European and American officials, and their response had been positive. However, during talks in recent weeks between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams, the Palestinians refused to include the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state in the shared declaration the teams are preparing, which will be made at Annapolis. Erekat’s statement to Israel Radio on Monday did not seem to imply that refusal would waver ahead of the summit…” The Haaretz account of Erekat’s and Olmert’s remarks on recognition of Israel as a Jewish state are here.

There are already 557 comments on Erekat’s remarks posted on the Haaretz website.