Palestinians in W. Bank ridicule Obama’s guarantees

Palestinians in W. Bank ridicule Obama’s guarantees

NABLUS, The Letter of Guarantees sent by US President Barack Obama to Israeli premier Binyamin Netanyahu in exchange for extending settlement construction freeze has drawn widespread mockery among Palestinian citizens in the West Bank who urged the PA officials in Ramallah not to wager on the Americans.

The Letter of Guarantees, according to the Hebrew Maariv newspaper, included US pledges to supply the Zionist entity state-of-the art weapons, and assurances to foil any Arab attempt to present the Palestinian issue before the UNSC for at least one year.

Obama also assured the Israelis of pressuring the Palestinian negotiators in Ramallah not to put any preconditions to continue the direct negotiations, and that the issue of settlements would be part of the final stage in the negotiations together with the issue of Jerusalem, the Palestinian refugees, and the issue of water.

In addition, the letter of guarantees stipulated the US undertaking to keep the Jordanian valley and Israeli big settlements there under full Israeli control in any future agreement with the Palestinians.

A waste if time
Palestinian public in the West Bank, however, derided the Obama’s promises, describing them as "worse" than the Letter of Guarantees sent by former US president George W. Bush to former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon when he presented his infamous roadmap plan.

"Obama’s guarantees are worse than the guarantees given by Bush to Sharon in the Road Map and prove that the peace option is a waste of time. This no more than a subtle  way of  enabling Israel to keep full control of the West Bank and liquidating the Palestinian issue," said Palestinian citizen Rateb Al-Khaldi, adding that the Palestinian people in the West Bank mock the futile negotiations that the PA is conducting with the Israeli occupation.

"If you conduct genuine polls in the Palestinian street, you would find that no one is optimistic about the success of negotiations even those who defend the PA negotiating team", Khaldi added.

Only 40% of the West Bank
For her part, Palestinian Trade Union activist Dima Salah Al-Dein shared the same sentiments of Khaldi, saying the Obama’s guarantees left nothing for the Palestinians to negotiate over.

She added that she had personally heard from high-profile PA officials in Ramallah that the Palestinians should accept a state on 40% of the land of the West Bank because "it is the only available thing for them".

Meanwhile, university student Waleed Nasser charged that the PA negotiating team was "gasping" behind the economic solution, and they view matters from the angle of money, and thus, they couldn’t be trusted with the Palestinian issue and the public couldn’t wager on them." Everyone believes that those negotiations are doomed to failure," He underlined.

"In the past Palestinians were divided on the issue of negotiations; a group of Palestinians defended the negotiations and attached big hope on them to lead to a Palestinian state. This time it is noticeable that everyone in agreement that those negotiations failed even before they started," underscored Nasser.

The PA must apologize
For her part, Palestinian citizen Sojod Al-Maliki underlined that the de-facto PA president Mahmoud Abbas and his retinue owe the Palestinian people a historic apology for the moral and material damage they have caused to the Palestinian issue by going to the negotiations, emphasizing that Abbas should dissolve the PA to exonerate himself and his team of that big sin.

"I really cannot understand the value of the PA talking about the need to freeze settlement activities as a condition for negotiations while having full security coordination with the Israeli occupation under all circumstances," Maliki pointed out.

She noted that for the PA to stop security coordination would be more painful  to the Israeli occupation and more effective than a so called settlement freeze which is never implemented in reality, because the security coordination has tied up the hands of the Palestinian resistance giving the occupation the right atmosphere for settlement expansion.

She added that Obama’s pledges to Netanyahu proved wrong all those who wagered on Obama to deal more fairly with the Palestinian issue.