The plan of the Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, to declare a Palestinian state next May in the absence of a peace deal with Israel came under a stinging assault yesterday from one of the most respected figures in Palestinian politics.
Dr Haider Abdel-Shafi, a former chief negotiator and critic of the Middle East peace process, said Mr Arafat's aim defied logic.
The veteran politician said the Palestinian President should instead suspend peace talks which he said Israel had used as a cover to cement its grip on occupied land.
Mr Arafat has repeatedly vowed to declare a Palestinian state unless a final peace settlement is reached with Israel by May 4th, 1999 - the deadline for a deal under the Oslo interim accords.
"To declare a state without any jurisdiction over territory, without any sovereignty, with all the restrictions that we know that Israel imposes with regard to movement . . . what is the logic of declaring a state?" said Dr Abdel-Shafi (79).
"First of all I don't know why he needs to declare what he intends to declare. Why doesn't he keep it to himself until the time comes? Is he warning Israel to take care?" he asked.
"It would be more prudent to simply suspend negotiations and tell the world that `Sorry we can't proceed because Israel is violating the terms of reference'," Dr Abdel-Shafi said.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have stagnated for 17 months, with the sides now bogged down over the extent of an Israeli withdrawal from more of the West Bank under a US initiative to move talks to a settlement.
Mr Arafat has not yet spelled out whether he would declare a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza, including on land still occupied by Israel, or only on those parts that have come under Palestinian self-rule since 1994.
Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned that the Jewish state would respond with measures of its own - a veiled reference to annexing Jewish settlements and other strategic ground in the West Bank.
Dr Abdel-Shafi led the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Middle East peace conference in 1991, but parted ways with Mr Arafat over the omission from the 1993 Oslo accords of any guarantee of limits on the spread of Jewish settlements.
A champion of democratic government, Dr Abdel-Shafi resigned from the Palestinian Legislative Council last year over alleged corruption and misrule by Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority and what he said was the council's failure to tackle it.
The former doctor commands wide respect as an "elder statesman" and won more votes than any other candidate in the 1996 legislative council elections.
His views on the Oslo process and the lack of democracy in the Palestinian Authority have struck a strong chord among ordinary Palestinians, angered by the impasse in peace talks with Israel.
An opinion poll published earlier this month by the Centre for Palestine Research and Studies in Nablus found that only 37 per cent of respondents believed the peace process with Israel would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state. It also showed a drop in public support for Mr Arafat to 48 per cent from 61 per cent a month earlier and widespread distrust in the probity of Palestinian political institutions.