Palestinians promised state by 2012, Arab paper reports

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has promised Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas a state by 2012, the Arabic daily al-Hayat reported yesterday, quoting an Egyptian official.

As US envoy George Mitchell sought to launch indirect talks last week, Mr Abbas addressed Mr Obama: “. . . since you believe in [an independent Palestinian state], it is your duty to take steps toward a solution and impose a solution”. The US administration responded to this appeal by assuring pro-Israel groups in the US that a deal would not be imposed.

Mr Abbas flatly rejected both an Israeli idea of a Palestinian state with provisional borders and the plan of Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad to proclaim a state unilaterally in August 2011.

Mr Abbas’s stands put him at odds with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has expressed only cool support for the two-state solution, and with Mr Fayyad, who has said the Palestinian Authority (PA) could declare a state if negotiations with Israel failed. The presidential office warned that a unilateral declaration of a state would leave the PA with less than half of the West Bank and without East Jerusalem as the state’s capital.

Mr Abbas and his aides accused Mr Fayyad of undermining presidential power by taking the initiative to lay down the institutions of a state, and fixing a deadline for its emergence. Mr Fayyad has taken other decisions without reference to the president. The Palestinian government has won the approval of many in the West Bank by imposing a ban on Palestinians working in Israeli settlements. Although this ban could leave 21,000 Palestinians jobless, they will be given time to find alternative employment before facing fines.

The government has also barred the sale of Israeli settlement goods and products and use of Israeli mobile phones in PA- administered enclaves. Mr Fayyad has also courted Palestinian public opinion by participating in popular actions against Israel’s West Bank wall and settlements.

These measures have caught the imagination of student and youth groups in the West Bank and Gaza. They have signed a petition calling for an all-out boycott of Israeli products, as well as any “economic, political, cultural and institutional” activities that “legitimise” Israel’s occupation.

Four Palestinians died on Wednesday when Egypt attempted to close down a tunnel for smuggling essential goods into blockaded Gaza. Cairo’s crackdown coincided with US and EU pressure on Israel to allow into the strip limited shipments of building materials for UN projects.

While this does not provide for the reconstruction of public facilities and private homes destroyed or damaged in Israel’s 2008-2009 offensive, work on sewage and other key projects is under way.

The slight easing of restrictions has enabled the UN agency caring for Palestinian refugees and the One Laptop Per Child group to distribute 2,100 computers to girls and boys at a primary school in Rafah in the strip’s south, beginning a programme to provide laptops for 500,000 children in UN schools throughout the region.