Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Monday the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas won't accept a future statehood without the Hamas-run Gaza Strip or Jerusalem as its capital.
"The Palestinian statehood will not be created without the West Bank, Jerusalem as the capital, and the Gaza Strip," said Erekat.
Erekat's remarks were made in response to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's statements that Israel will not accept a Palestinian statehood containing Gaza as long as rockets continue to be fired into Israel from the coastal territory.
"It is clear that Israel uses Gaza coup to separate it from the West Bank and prevent the creation of the Palestinian statehood," Erekat said, referring to last June's bitter infighting between Hamas militants and Abbas' Fatah security forces in Gaza, which ended with a fiasco for Fatah and Hamas' takeover of the strip.
"The Gaza issue is an internal Palestinian affair," he said.
After last June's deadly infighting, Abbas sacked the Hamas-led Palestinian government, which was rejected by Hamas. As a result, the geographically-divided Palestinian territories was further politically split -- with Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip and Abbas' Fatah running the West Bank.
Earlier on Sunday, Livni said there was no hope for a Palestinian state that included the Gaza Strip, as long as Gaza-based Palestinian militants keep firing rockets and mortars into Israeli communities.
Livni made the remarks one day after two Israeli brothers were seriously wounded in a Qassam rocket attack on the southern town of Sderot.
Livni also hinted an escalated Israeli military operation against Gaza, saying that "there is a need for the international community to understand that there are certain steps that Israel needs to take in order to stop it."
But she declined to say what those steps might be.
Source: Xinhua
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