Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat spoke at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv last week and apparently tried to convince his audience that the Palestinian Authority is serious about negotiations with Israel but the Israeli government is not.
Erekat said that if Israel does not agree to return to its pre-1967 borders – with some land swaps – nothing will stop the PA from going to the United Nations Security Council in 2011 and asking it to recognize a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.
By then, he predicted, the European Union will have recognized such a Palestinian state.
Erekat sounded a somewhat scornful note regarding the current Israeli leadership, saying that he will be discussing “core issues” with with United States Special Mideast Envoy George Mitchell, and he does not care if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu speaks to him “about the game between HaPoel Tel Aviv and Maccabi Haifa.”