Following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's comments on Monday that there will be no peace agreement without Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel as a Jewish State, pressure has been mounting against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from within his Fatah party to declare that there will be no return to the negotiations table under these conditions.
Fatah sources believe the American administration is allowing Netanyahu to buy time, and said that Netanyahu's reiteration of his conditions even after US special Mideast envoy George Mitchell's visit to the region, is proof of how futile the American pressure really is.
The sources said that at this point in time, negotiation with the Israelis would be risky, and added that "the three-way summit (between Netanyahu, Abbas and US President Barack Obama) in New York only caused damage".
The sources stressed that only an American commitment in writing to realize their promise to execute Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's two-year plan to have a state within the 1967 borders, would allow for a return to negotiations.
"Special American involvement is needed, like that of 1999, when they helped topple Netanyahu," a Fatah source said.
Fatah Central Committee member and head of the party's media committee Muhammad Dahlan has stated in recent days that the Palestinians must not return to the negotiations table under the current conditions, especially in light of the ongoing construction in settlements.
Fatah sources believe that empty negotiations with Israel will constitute a deadly blow to the party, especially in light of the conflict with Hamas, which has only intensified following the PA's handling of the Goldstone report on the Gaza war.
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