BICOM

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) senior peace negotiator Saeb Erekat reiterated opposition to recognition of Israel as a characteristically Jewish state under a peace agreement.

Maariv reported that at a meeting of the Ministerial Committee on Legislation, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who also heads Israel’s negotiating team, told Jewish Home minister Uri Orbach, that he should “expect to be surprised” over the PA’s willingness to recognise a Jewish state. However, in apparent response to the report, Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio yesterday “I told minister Livni in Munich recently that we won’t change our history, culture and religion… We are not going to recognise Israel as a Jewish state.”

Israeli leaders have long argued that under the two states for two peoples formula, regarded as a basis for any future peace agreement, Israeli acceptance of a nation-state for the Palestinian people must be met with mutual recognition for a nation-state of the Jewish people. The issue is a key point of contention and Maariv says this morning that recognition of Israel as a Jewish state will be included by US Secretary of State John Kerry in his eagerly anticipated framework plan for final status talks. Earlier this month, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented that PA President Mahmoud Abbas “knows that there will not be a deal without recognition of the nation-state.”

Meanwhile, in an interview yesterday with Channel Ten, PA Religious Affairs Minister Mahmoud al-Habash said that the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the most sacred site in Judaism, must be placed under Palestinian sovereignty in a peace agreement. He said that “every inch” of territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War must be handed to the Palestinians, adding that, “The Buraq Wall too will be under Palestinian sovereignty,” using the Muslim name for the Western Wall. It is a position opposed by Israeli leaders across the political spectrum.