PFLP: Israeli, Palestinian meet 'grave mistake'

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said Monday that the upcoming meeting between Palestinian and Israeli envoys was a "grave political mistake." PLO official Saeb Erekat and Israel's Yitzhak Molcho will meet on Tuesday in Jordan, with Quartet negotiators also attending. PLO leader Wasl Abu Yossef insisted Sunday: "This is not a resumption of negotiations." But the leftist PFLP, long opposed to negotiations based on the two-state solution, said the Palestinian Authority's decision to take part in the meeting would backfire on them. "Holding meetings with the occupation state after the Palestinian Israeli conflict has been referred to the UN institutions is a grave political mistake which will encourage occupation to go ahead with its aggressiveness against the Palestinian people and their properties," PFLP said in a statement. "Further, Arab, Islamic, and international sides will be encouraged to evade their political, legal and moral responsibilities," the statement said. The only beneficiaries of the Amman meeting, the statement added, will be the Israeli occupation and international Quartet -- the US, European Union, UN and Russia. Negotiations have been stalled since September 2010 when Israel refused to renew a partial freeze on Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank as demanded by the Palestinians, who want to found a state there as well as in East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Both sides downplayed this week's meeting, but the Quartet negotiators, led by former British premier Tony Blair, are pressing for results after they sought to relaunch talks when President Abbas submitted Palestine's bid for full membership of the negotiations on Sep. 23. The framework proposed by the Quartet set out a return to direct talks within a month, and "comprehensive proposals ... on territory and security," by late January 2012.