Senior Palestinian official: We will never negotiate directly with Israel again

Apparently seeking an eternal war against Israel, Palestinian foreign Minister Al-Malki said the Palestinians will never again engage Israel in direct negotiations. 

Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Riad Al-Malki stated Monday that the Palestinians will “never again” engage Israel in direct negotiations towards a final diplomatic resolution to their dispute with Israel.

“We will never go back and sit again in a direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations,” he stated while on a visit to Japan with Palestinian Authority (PA) head Mahmoud Abbas.

He stressed that a multilateral framework is needed, and he praised unilateral international pressure on Israel, and specifically an initiative discussed last month by France to revive plans for an international conference to end the conflict and an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council.

He also claimed that without international involvement a vacuum will be left that may be filled by the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group.

“If Daesh [Arabic acronym for ISIS] take advantage of lack of any brokers … then of course, they might come and try to fill it,” he said according to AFP, adding that “this is very dangerous.”

Israel is more immediately worried about the Palestinian Hamas terror organization taking control of the PA in Judea and Samaria as they did in Gaza in 2007, and work jointly with the Palestinians to thwart such an development

“If the Americans are giving up and the Europeans don’t have the courage to do anything and Arabs are really worried about their own problems, what do you expect? Extremists around might take over,” he warned.

Abbas met on Monday with the Emperor of Japan, Akihito, in the Imperial Palace in the Japanese capital, Tokyo.

During the meeting, the two discussed the latest developments in the Middle East and the occupied Palestinian territories, the Palestinian foreign ministry stated.

Responding to the blunt statements, an unnamed official who is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s entourage in Berlin told Israel’s IDF Radio that “we know that peace will be obtained through direct negotiation. It appears that the Palestinians know this, and therefore don’t want it [direct negotiations].”

Al-MalkiJapanpeace negotiations