PLO adopts President Obama's position that Hamas remain armed until
permanent Palestinian-Israeli agreement reached
Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA 28 July, 2014

Once again President Obama has succeeded in hardening the Palestinian
position by taking a stand that was a harder line than that of the
Palestinians

At the start of his first term, President Obama introduced the concept that
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations be conditioned on a settlement construction
freeze. The Palestinians, who until then engaged in negotiations without
such a condition, adopted President Obama's demand.

Yesterday President Obama opted to take a radically different stand than the
22 July position of the EU that "All terrorist groups in Gaza must disarm"
when he told Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that the disarming of the
terrorists in the Gaza Strip would only take place within the context of a
final overall Israeli-Palestinian agreement ("The President stressed the
U.S. view that, ultimately, any lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict must ensure the disarmament of terrorist groups and the
demilitarization of Gaza.")

Today senior Fatah/PLO official Saeb Erekat said in a interview on the
Arabic Sky News that Israel's demand to disarm the Gaza groups of their
weapons is an issue that belongs to negotiations of a permanent settlement,
and will not even be discussed before Israel recognizes a Palestinian state
in the '67 lines with Jerusalem as its capital.

Until now Palestinian officials declined to take a public stand on this
matter, perhaps because the official PA stand is that the PA honors signed
agreements and the agreements signed between the PLO and Israel explicitly
prohibit that there be armed groups.
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