(CNSNews.com) - As Fatah, the “moderate” Palestinian faction, prepares this week to hold its first convention in 20 years, a series of platform proposals threatens to take relations with an already skeptical Israeli government to a new low.
 
Some of the proposals that will be voted on in Bethlehem this week, according to weekend leaks to Arab media, include continued non-recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, the continued right to use violence against Israeli occupation, and calls to open a strategic dialogue with Iran.
 
Another says Israel should withdraw to the borders held before the 1967 Six-Day War – a demand already ruled out by successive Israeli governments and acknowledged as unrealistic by the U.S. – and that Palestinians should unilaterally declare an independent state along the lines of the pre-1967 borders if peace talks don’t bear fruit.
 
Other proposals reportedly include the right of return for all Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war launched by Arab states against the newly-independent Israel, along with their descendants. (Israeli governments have long argued that the displaced Arabs should return to territory under Palestinian control, not to Israel, as their sheer number today would radically alter Israel’s demographics.)
 
At a gathering of ministers from his Likud party before Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu counseled waiting until Fatah adopted its final platform before responding formally.
 
One of those present, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, described the reported political plan as “a declaration of war.”
 
“Fatah’s unwillingness to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, the demand for a withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a complete right of return for Palestinian refugees is tantamount to wiping out the State of Israel from existence,” he said.
 
The Fatah platform also came up during the Israeli cabinet meeting, where Daniel Hershkowitz, minister of science and technology and leader of a small religious party, stressed that recognition of Israel as a Jewish state was a fundamental condition for peace negotiations.
 
Citing the reported Fatah stance, Hershkowitz said it showed that “we have no-one to negotiate with.”
 
In his comments at the cabinet meeting, released afterwards by his office, Netanyahu alluded to the issue, with a message to “Palestinian moderates.”

“In the framework of the peace agreements, Israel expects that the Palestinians will recognize the State of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people, that the problem of the refugees will be resolved outside Israel’s borders, that there will be effective security arrangements and demilitarization, with international recognition and guarantees,” he said.
 
“These are not pre-conditions for the start of a peace process but the basic conditions for establishing a lasting and stable peace. Palestinian moderates should internalize this.”
 
Netanyahu also noted that, according to the Hebrew calendar, Sunday marked the fourth anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, an event that involved the uprooting of almost 10,000 Israelis living there, and had resulted in Gaza becoming “a base for Hamas-led, Iranian-sponsored terrorism.”
 
From now on, Netanyahu said, peace negotiations with the Palestinians would once again be “based on reciprocity, not unilateralism.”
 
The “reciprocity” principle was pushed by Netanyahu during his previous term as prime minister in 1996-1999, but fell into disuse under his successors.
 
Terrorists allowed in
 
Fatah, the faction headed by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has dominated the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for decades and the P.A. since that body was established as a result of the Oslo peace accords in the early 1990s.
 
The Oslo process and later agreements saw Israel withdraw from the main Palestinian population centers of the West Bank and, in 2005, from all of the Gaza Strip.
 
Fatah split violently with Islamist rival Hamas, which since mid-2007 has controlled Gaza, leaving the Fatah-led P.A.’s authority limited to the West Bank.
 
More than 2,000 delegates from the West Bank, Gaza and abroad are due to attend the three-day event.

With some exceptions, Israel gave permission for Fatah delegates from Gaza to travel through Israel to Bethlehem, but Hamas leaders said they would not allow them to leave unless hundreds of Hamas members held in P.A. jails in the West Bank are freed.
 
Hamas’ stance led to some calls to postpone the already long-overdue event, but with hundreds of delegates having already arrived in Bethlehem, Fatah officials said Sunday it would go ahead.
 
One of the more controversial attendees who has arrived in Bethlehem, Khaled Abu Usba, took part in one of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in Israel’s history, 31 years ago.
 
He was one of 11 Fatah terrorists who infiltrated northern Israel by boat in 1978, seized a bus of day trippers and carried out a shooting spree along a coastal highway that ended with the blowing up of the bus near Tel Aviv. Thirty-eight Israelis were killed, 13 of them children. Nine of the terrorists were also killed.
 
Abu Usba another terrorist were captured, and he was convicted and sentenced to 12 life sentences. Seven years later, both were released as part of a controversial prisoner exchange negotiated by then Prime Minister Shimon Peres – 1,150 security prisoners freed in return for the release of three Israeli soldiers captured in Lebanon three years earlier.
 
Despite his history, Israel permitted Abu Asba, who now lives in Jordan, to enter the West Bank for the Fatah meeting.
 
Ma’an news agency quoted him as saying in an interview that he hoped the convention would “bring back the Fatah of the revolution, the Fatah of [Yasser Arafat] and the Fatah of sacrifices.”
 
Palestinians revere the terrorists who took part in what Israelis call the “coastal road massacre,” especially a woman in the group, Dalal Mughrabi. Schools in Gaza and the West Bank have been named after her, and when her remains were exhumed and returned to Lebanon as part of another prisoner exchange, last summer, P.A. leaders hailed her as a hero and example to all Palestinian women.
 
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday the government was right to allow Fatah members wanting to attend this week’s convention to do so.
 
“There is an importance attached to this conference and its representation so that what happens there will gain legitimacy among the Palestinians,” said Barak, a former prime minister and leader of the Labor party, a member of the ruling coalition.
 
Ties with Iran
 
A senior Fatah member and former minister in Abbas’ self-rule administration on Saturday expounded on the call to form strategic links with Iran.
 
“The challenges that face the Palestinian people, in terms of unprecedented attacks and dangers in Jerusalem, oblige the Fatah movement to formulate its regional strategic alliances based on new principles and criteria,” Hatim Abdul Qader told the Palestinian Ma’an news agency.
 
He said the Islamic republic’s influence and power in the region should be exploited to serve the Palestinian cause.
 
Fatah relations with Tehran have been cool since the Islamic revolution, in part because under Abbas’ predecessor, Yasser Arafat, the organization had cordial ties with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Iran’s arch foe. In recent years, Iran has furthermore become a key supporter of Hamas.
 
Last month, Fatah and P.A. negotiator Saeb Erekat held talks with Iran’s foreign minister on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Egypt, a meeting condemned by the Israeli government, which views Iran as the gravest security threat.