Fatah official: Any new US proposal will have to wait

The Palestinian leadership will discuss any last-minute proposal from the US or Europe but not until after the upcoming bid for full UN membership, senior Fatah official Mohammad Shtayyeh said Tuesday. Shtayyeh told Ma'an the Palestinian Authority expected the US and Europe to put forward a proposal to try and convince the Palestinians to stop their UN bid for statehood. "So far, we haven't received any written proposals, but we expect the US envoys David Hale and Dennis Ross to bring this proposal during their visit to the region later this week. "We will be ready to discuss any good written last-minute proposal the US and Europe may suggest, but that will have to wait until we finish with the UN bid." The Fatah central committee member questioned why international envoys intensified their visits at the last moment. "Why does the world wait until the last five minutes to take action? We know the real goal is not to restart negotiations, but rather to prevent us from going to the UN." Hale and Ross return to the Middle East this week, as US President Barack Obama's administration scrambles to head off a Palestinian plan to seek full UN membership during the General Assembly session that begins on Monday. Shtayyeh says the wording of any proposal the US envoys bring is irrelevant. What matters is whether Israel will commit to it, he says. "Will [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu stand and say he will stop settlement expansion and agree on a clear authority as a reference for negotiations? "We are unable to understand what contradiction there is between what we seek through our UN bid, which is a state on the pre-1967 borders, and any possible new proposal the US and Europe might come up with." Shtayyeh said the last-minute efforts were a tactical "maneuver" by the US to impede the UN bid rather than serious attempts to create a new initiative. The Palestinians are now UN observers without voting rights. To become a full member, their bid would have to be approved by the UN Security Council, where the US has said it will veto it. The US and Israel argue that issues such as Palestinian statehood should be decided by the two sides at the negotiating table rather than at the United Nations. Diplomats have said it is not clear what the Palestinians will do when the UN General Assembly opens. Rather than seeking full UN membership for a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, they could seek status as a "non-member state," which would require a simple majority of the 193-nation assembly. The US, however, said it would not favor this model either. "Our view remains that neither course, neither the Security Council nor the General Assembly, is going to lead to the result that they seek, which is to have a stable, secure state living in peace, that they have to do this through negotiations," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Monday. Another possibility would be to propose a resolution to the General Assembly that might give greater backing to their desire for a state but not actually call for upgrading the Palestinians status at the United Nations.