Dr. Erakat on tonight’s Israeli referendum law: ''Ending the occupation of our land is not and cannot be dependent on any sort of referendum.”

Dr. Saeb Erakat, Chief Palestinian Negotiator, strongly denounced the new law passed by the Israeli parliament earlier this evening requiring a referendum to approve any Israeli withdrawal from occupied East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.

''With the passage of this bill,” Dr. Erakat explained, “the Israeli leadership, yet again, is making a mockery of international law, which is not subject to the whims of Israeli public opinion. Under international law there is a clear and absolute obligation on Israel to withdraw not only from East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, but from all of the territories that it has occupied since 1967. Ending the occupation of our land is not and cannot be dependent on any sort of referendum.”

Dr. Erakat continued, “This is Israel’s attempt to veil its oppression of the Palestinian people as an exercise of Israeli democracy. Ending the occupation and freeing the Palestinian people would be the purest expression of democratic values. The international community’s answer to this bill should be a worldwide recognition of the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”