Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's senior security adviser has lent his support to recent calls for the PA to abandon security arrangements established with Israel in the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Tawfiq Tirawi, who also serves as a member on Abbas's Fatah faction's Central Committee, and is the former head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, made the statements Sunday in an interview with Dunya Al-Watan.
Speaking about the demands of terrorist organization Hamas that the PA cease security arrangements with Israel as part of formation of a unity government, Tirawi added that he supports stopping the arrangement.
Tirawi said that "a communications channel in the security field" has always been managed on the basis of the PA interest to achieve security stability.
Senior PA security officials last Thursday said the arrangements were on the brink of collapse following the massive violent Arab protests for "Nakba Day," commemorating the "catastrophe" of Israel's establishment. About 150 rioters besieged Ofer Prison, located just outside Ramallah, demanding the release of jailed terrorists while hurling rocks and burning tires at IDF forces. During the course of the protests, two Arab rioters were killed.
"Jews also want a Palestinian one-state solution"
"The Israelis are not interested partners in peace, they just want to manipulate the time in order to establish facts on the ground," claimed Tirawi, who expressed his open opposition to continuing the peace talks.
Tirawi criticized the stated decision by PA leadership several years ago to pursue peace talks as the only option, calling this a great mistake and saying the talks should have been labeled as just one of several means of operations.
The security adviser added that the two-state solution is dead, and called for the advancement of the "one-state solution," whereby an Arab state of "Palestine" would replace the Jewish state of Israel.
Tirawi said the "one-state solution" viewpoint was held by Fatah activists, and that a referendum would certainly prove this is the accepted position. He added that many Jews also support the establishment of "one Palestinian state from the Jordan Valley to the Mediterranean Sea."
Similarly, Tirawi declared around the time of the PA unity deal with Hamas in late April that all of Israel is "Palestine," and earlier said in an interview, which was translated by Palestinian Media Watch, that the two-state solution is dead and that it was time to return to armed struggle.
At the height of the latest round of US-sponsored peace talks last December, Tirawi stated "not a centimeter of Jerusalem will be liberated unless every grain of Palestinian soil is soaked in the blood of its brave people," adding that "the struggle," and not negotiations, would bring Jerusalem "back to us."
Revealing the PA's true intentions, Tirawi noted, "we have conducted negotiations, while not laying down the rifle. It [the rifle] may be resting but we will not neglect our principles."