Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Executive Committee, said on Tuesday that the PLO is the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in all its places of residence and that it preserves Palestinian identity.
In a statement on the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the establishment of the PLO, Erekat said that the Palestinian people stand firmly on their land while adhering to their rights until they achieve freedom and independence in a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital and a just solution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees, in accordance with UN Resolution 194, and until all the Palestinian prisoners are released.
Erekat stressed that Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO's Executive Committee are working tirelessly to establish the status of the PLO in the face of the "conspiracies" and plans to destroy the organization politically.
He further said that the “Deal of the Century”, the American initiative to resolve the conflict, is doomed to fail because peace begins and ends with the end of the occupation and the implementation of international law and international legitimacy.
Erekat claimed that since its establishment, the PLO has dealt with the "colonialist" plans and the "ethnic cleansing" carried out by the Israeli governments, and is now dealing with the US administration, which seeks to undermine the Palestinian identity and the achievements of the PLO over the past 50 years.
The PA has boycotted the US administration since President Donald Trump broke with decades of consensus and recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December of 2017.
It has also rejected the US peace plan before it has even been unveiled, claiming it is biased in Israel’s favor.
The PA has already announced that it will boycott the upcoming US-led economic conference in Bahrain, in which the Trump administration is planning to release the economic component of its peace plan.
On Sunday, the PLO Executive Committee called on the world to boycott the Bahrain conference, saying it hadn’t “authorized any party to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people.”
