Jerusalem/Gaza City - A Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence would not succeed and would not be ratified by the UN Security Council, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday, reacting to a Palestinian threat to declare statehood instead of negotiating with Israel. Echoing remarks by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday night, Lieberman told parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee that any Palestinian unilateral independence declaration would breech agreements the Palestinian Authority (PA) signed with Israel and would thus nullify Israel's obligations under the same accords.
Lieberman's comments, and those of Netanyahu, come after chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat caused a stir Sunday when he told Israel Army Radio the Palestinians were "fed up" with Israeli "foot- dragging" in reaching a negotiated peace agreement.
Erekat went on to say the Palestinians might ask the UN to support a unilateral declaration of independence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Such a step would be largely symbolic, since the United States would likely veto any such move in the UN Security Council.
The call is seen as a tactic to pressure Israel. It also comes as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is facing criticism at home for focusing on negotiations with Israel that have thus far failed to deliver a promised Palestinian state.
Palestinians are also disappointed with the US administration of President Barack Obama over its failure to pressure Israel into accepting a total freeze of Israeli construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Abbas has made such an absolute freeze a precondition for reviving peace talks with the Netanyahu government, which took office seven months ago. Negotiations were suspended one year ago as Israel began its election campaign, and have not yet been renewed.
The radical Islamist Hamas movement, the main rival of Abbas' Fatah party, also rejected Monday the idea of Palestinians seeking UN support for a unilateral independence declaration, saying such a step would have no meaning and would merely be an attempt by Abbas to pretend the PA had an alternative to faltering peace negotiations other than armed struggle.
"This move is not a meaningful declaration. It simply aims at escaping the benefits of resistance against the (Israeli) occupation," Salah al-Bardaweel, a senior Hamas leader based in Gaza, said in a statement sent to journalists.
"Instead of threatening to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state to be established in the air, we should work on liberating the occupied territories and end the current internal (Palestinian) division," he said.
Declaring a state "in the air on 20 per cent of the Palestinian land, which would be rejected by the world," was not the solution, he argued. Rather, Palestinians should focus on their own "ability to liberate the land."
He pointed out that the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had already made a unilateral declaration of statehood in 1988, and said that if a declaration had to be made again, rather than declare a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, "why not to declare a Palestinian state from the sea (Mediterranean) to the (Jordan) river?"
In Brussels, however, the European Union's foreign policy and security chief, Javier Solana, appeared not to rule the idea out entirely, telling journalists that he would not "give any advice to the Palestinians today - they know what they have to do."
But he added that "the most important thing is to get negotiations relaunched."
In June, Solana proposed the UN should go ahead and recognize a Palestinian state based on the region's 1967 borders if the parties themselves were unable to make peace by a fixed deadline.
