Erekat: Attempts to force Palestinians to accept dictations 'will be in vain'

RAMALLAH - 3 January 2018: Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)'s Executive Committee, said that any attempt by the United States and Israel to force the Palestinians to accept dictations "will be in vain".

In an interview with CNN, Erekat said that US President Donald Trump's decision to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem disqualified the United States from any possible role in the peace process and "destroyed any possibility of peace" between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Erekat also said "the Israeli Knesset vote on the settlement law and the Likud decision to impose Israeli sovereignty on the West Bank are an outcome of Trump's decision on recognizing Jerusalem as capital of Israel on 6th of last December," noting that this is part of new US-Israeli collaboration to dictate a solution and destroy the two-states principle.

He added that the decision would delegitimize the United States as an arbiter in the peace process.