Israel-Palestine talks to gain nothing

Press TV has conducted an interview with Hesham Tillawi, host of Current Issues TV and Radio, about an Israeli cabinet minister saying talks between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Tel Aviv regime may begin in Washington next week.

.
What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Hesham Tillawi, it was interesting to see the Israeli energy minister give out the statement of talks maybe resuming next week. What do you make of this announcement and also the fact that well Israel has said that it is ready for re-launch of talks without preconditions?

Tillawi: Well since 1993, the Palestinians have negotiated with the Israelis and what happened the result of that in 1993 there was only about seventy to eighty thousand settlers in the West Bank, now we have six hundred and fifty thousand settlers in the West Bank, illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

And you know, you cannot negotiate when you are the weak link, basically it is not going to be negotiation, there will be dictation because Israel it has the upper hand and therefore if no one is forcing Israel to give up anything, Israel will not give up anything.

And unfortunately now the settlers movement and the right-wing Israeli government is in control and that these people want to populate the West Bank where no room will be left for the Palestinians and that is the problem.

You know, there is nothing gained by this negotiation but the Palestinians were forced if they were going to cut off aid from the European Union and from United States or you come to the negotiations.

So the pressure is on the Palestinians from the Europeans and from the United States to come to this negotiation which will only make Israel look good and at the end they are going to come back and say well look, we tried to negotiate but the Palestinians don’t want to negotiate. We don’t have any one to negotiate with. This has been the story since 1993.

Press TV: That is true and quickly if you can, albeit the US I remember John Kerry in his recent conference said no details, don’t ask me anything, I am not going to reveal anything so does it jeopardizes the talks. The US is for a two-state solution but some are saying that that option is really not going to happen.

Do you think it is going to be a two-state solution or is it going to evolve into one-state solution? Will these talks have an outcome of any kind?

Tillawi: Well facts on the ground say it’s impossible to have a two-state solution. It’s impossible to have a viable Palestinian state when you have a million Israeli settlers there and what are you going to do with these million settlers?

And at the same time they are continuing to [build] and they did not even agree to stop building just even for the sake of negotiation.

I mean they could have said okay, well we are going to stop building for 90 days but even with that they did not, they said we are going to continue building. So a two-state solution on what? That’s the question.

A two-state solution when Israel is actually populating the parts that supposed to be allocated for the Palestinians. So no, I don’t see a two-state solution unless those Israeli settlers are going to be Palestinians and that’s not going to happen.