The Palestinian Authority slammed the door on renewed negotiations with Israel Wednesday, charging that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “declared war on the peace process” in his speech to Congress Tuesday.

Dr. Nabil Shaath, senior aide to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, told Voice of Israel government radio, “The objective of the speech was to kill negotiations. He [Netanyahu] wants to talk to me after what he did yesterday? Why in the hell did he go to Washington?”

Shaath also rejected any assertion that the unity pact with Hamas, which brings back the terrorist organization into the government headed by Fatah party movement leader Abbas, is a pact with an enemy.

Shaath shot back to the interviewer, “You have many enemies in your Cabinet and your Knesset, but you do not throw them out of the country.”

He asserted that Hamas joined the Palestinian Authority government on the basis of “non-violence.” he added, “We did not go into an agreement with Hamas to fight a war with Israel but to make peace with Israel.”

Asked what the next step is in the political process, characterized by mainstream media as the "peace process," Shaath said that the Palestinian Authority is depending on the United Nations to recognize it is a state in September, "as was promised us in 1948." He was referring to the Partition Plan of November 1947 that divided the country, known then as Palestine under the British Mandate, between a new Arab country and Israel. He neglected to mention that Israel, despite its share being a tiny portion of land originally promised to it, accepted the partition plan and the Arabs flatly rejected it.

The reference to 1948 is another indication of Palestinian Authority statements that the borders of its proposed state should be based on the Partition Plan, in which Israel is a miniscule state, and not the 1967 lines which are the Armistice lines that ended the War of Independence launched by the Arabs in 1948.  It repeatedly issues maps at official functions and in schools that do not even mention the Partition Plan but instead show that the entire State of Israel is “Palestine.”