- JAY BUSHINSKY. Jerusalem
Post: Jul 16, 1997.
Saeb Erekat's replacement
by Nabil Shaath as the Palestinian Authority's chief negotiator was attributed
in West Bank political quarters yesterday to a demand by Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu.
But Netanyahu's director
of communication, David Bar- Illan, flatly denied this. "There never has
been any interference on our part" in the PA's choice of personnel, he
said.
The consensus in
Palestinian political circles was that Erekat was regarded as a hardliner by
Israeli policymakers while Shaath, the PA's planning minister, is perceived as
a moderate.
Erekat, of Jericho, was a
professor at Nablus' A-Najah University until the advent of the Oslo Accords in
1993 swept him into international politics. In contrast, Shaath arrived in the
Gaza Strip with PA Chairman Yasser Arafat from Tunis. Veteran West Bankers
consider Erekat an "insider" and Shaath an "outsider."
Israeli sources conceded
that Arafat may have wanted to show a more moderate face by turning to Shaath
and dropping Erekat.
Pressed as to whether the
prime minister urged Arafat to make this change, one of the sources asked
rhetorically, "Do you think the Palestinians would accommodate Netanyahu
for nothing?" They implied that there would have had to have been a
trade-off, which, in this case, they said, did not occur.
Erekat left for the US
shortly before the last round of talks between Shaath and Defense Minister
Yitzhak Mordechai. He will retain his post as minister of local government, but
unconfirmed reports said he was considering doing academic research at an
American university.
© 1997 The Jerusalem
Post