Palestinian peace architect says favors annulling Oslo Accords with Israel

A prominent Palestinian peace architect and peace negotiator with Israel said Thursday that he is in favor of annulling the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Ahmed Qurei, also known as Abu Alla, a former prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), said in a televised interview that he is in favor of annulling Oslo Accords "because the previous and the current Israeli governments trampled the agreement."

"The Israeli governments had turned the agreement into a meaningless one," said Qurei, who was one of the agreements' architects together with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and late leader Yasser Arafat in 1993.

Arafat and late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the historic peace agreement, the Oslo Accords, in the White House on Sept. 13, 1993.

"It's the right of all parties to wonder whether the agreement is still valid or not," Qurei said. "The two-state solution is not over yet, but currently, the Israeli position is the worst ever since the signing of the agreement."

Under the interim Oslo agreement, the two sides were supposed to negotiate a permanent status in September 1999.

The sides held a round of talks later at Camp David but failed to reach an agreement.

Also on Thursday, Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator and the secretary general of Palestine Liberation Organization, told "Voice of Palestine" radio that Israel is the one which annulled the Oslo Accords.

"Israel, which ended the Oslo Accords by talking about dates that it had never committed itself to, annulled the accords by its policies against the Palestinians, mainly the expansion of settlements."

The last direct peace talks between the two sides, sponsored by the United States, collapsed in April 2014, after nine months of futile efforts.

The talks failed due to deep differences over settlement, security and borders issues. Endit