For Arafat, it was important to negotiate with Israelis for a Palestine state: Analyst
Former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Belin, who helped negotiate the Oslo peace accords, shares an anecdote from February 1999, “when European countries were ready to recognise a Palestinian state in a period of a year” and he had asked Yasser Arafat for his view about it.
He told Al Jazeera that Arafat said, “Yossi, it is very important for me to feel that the world is with us, and that European countries support us and they are ready to recognise a Palestinian state. But we already have the support of 123 countries and we don’t have a state. What I’m worried about is that the world will recognise a non-existent Palestinian state, but I will not get anything from this.
“What is more important to me, is to negotiate with the Israelis and to have a state rather than to have a kind of a make-believe [country], which is not a state.”
Belin added that he is not against the news of more countries recognising Palestinian statehood, but that drawing borders “should be left for the parties.
“But otherwise, I think the most important thing is to recognise the Palestinian right for a state, and to demand both sides to sit together and negotiate peace and not to strengthen the extremists on both sides.”
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