AMMAN: Members of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee approved Saturday night the recommendations of the Palestine Central Council to suspend recognition of Israel and took concrete steps to move ahead.

The committee’s statement, however, made no specific mention of stopping security coordination with Israel.

The PLO said that relations with Israel on all fronts, including security, will suffer as a result of this decision.

“Relations with Israel will retract starting from the security relations, as well as being relieved of the economic burdens that were placed by the Paris

Agreement,” read the PLO statement.

According to the communique from Ramallah, the only practical decision approved by the committee was the establishment of a higher subcommittee to ensure the “implementation of the decisions of the Central Council, including the decision to suspend recognition of Israel until it recognizes the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders, the cancelation of the annexation of Jerusalem and the suspension of settlements.”

Anees Sweidan, head of external relations at the PLO, told Arab News that the executive committee was seriously considering speeding up the convening of the Palestine National Council.

“There are some serious decisions that need to be made and there is consensus that the highest level of leadership in the PLO must convene to make such decisions,” he said.

In addition to the political and security decisions, the PLO’s executive committee needs to fill in some vacant spots that can only be made by the PNC. Ghassan Shakaa, former Nablus mayor and long-time PLO executive committee member, died on Jan. 25.

The PLO also spoke about a number of steps that will be made in the coming weeks and months, including an important speech by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the United Nations Security Council meeting on Feb. 20. Palestinian UN permanent representative Riyad Mansour told Arab News that Abbas will speak about Palestinians’ yearning for peace.

He will stretch out an olive branch at the UN Security Council and ask the world community to take responsibility for peace in the Middle East.

Palestinians are also planning to step up pressure on Israel by calling on the International Criminal Court to proceed in investigating Israeli crimes, especially in terms of continued settlement activities. The Fourth Geneva Convention, which deals with prolonged occupations, stipulates that occupying powers are not allowed to move in their citizens to areas that they occupy.

Israel has never accepted the application of the Geneva Convention, nor does it accept that it is an occupying power, arguing instead that the areas it occupied in 1967 are contested in part because only two countries (Britain and Pakistan) had recognized Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The PLO’s executive committee also defended its Chairman Abbas, who is being attacked by the US and rejected American efforts to “threaten and blackmail” Palestinians.