RAMALLAH: When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed onto 15 international conventions on Tuesday, he shocked the US sponsors of troubled Middle East peace talks. But the move was carefully limited to avoid American retaliation.

Abbas’s action may have been designed more as a symbolic act of defiance to shore up his tenuous standing among Palestinians frustrated at the diplomatic impasse with Israel over their goal of statehood than a knife in the heart of peacemaking.

As a non-member state in the United Nations, Palestinians can join 63 international agencies and accords. However, by only signing conventions dealing with social and human rights instead of seeking full membership in UN bodies, the Palestinians’ foreign minister said they would not provoke US sanctions.

“Frankly speaking, I don’t expect any consequences coming from the US Congress regarding this step at all,” Riad Al-Malki told reporters on Wednesday.

“We did not talk about us becoming members of the UN specialized agencies in order for the Congress to activate their decision. We are talking about and we are still talking about letters of submission to protocols and conventions, and that’s it.”

Peace negotiations are near collapse amid mutual accusations of bad faith. In the latest such episode, Abbas inked the 15 conventions in search of more leverage against Israel after it refused to free a batch of Palestinian prisoners under terms of a previous agreement.





Israel, in turn, said it would not release those detainees without a Palestinian commitment to continue negotiations beyond an initial end-of-April deadline.