PA leader rejects Trump peace outline in speech to Palestinian leaders, saying ‘Jerusalem is not for sale’; reaffirms commitment to opposing terrorism
By ADAM RASGON, TOI Today, 2:14 am
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas speaking to Palestinian officials in Ramallah on January 28, 2020. (Credit: Wafa)
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas firmly rejected the Trump administration’s plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Tuesday, calling it the “the slap of the century.”
Abbas addressed the plan in a speech to senior Palestinian leaders, including representatives of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups, at the PA presidential headquarters in Ramallah.
“We say a thousand times: No, no and no to the ‘deal of the century,’” Abbas said, adding that the US plan “will not come to pass” and that “our people will send it to the dustbins of history.”
“We just heard President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu talking about the slap of the century. If God wills, we will strike them back with slaps,” he said.
Abbas spoke about an hour and a half after US President Donald Trump released the plan alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
Breaking with past US administrations, the plan envisions the creation of a Palestinian state in about 70% of the West Bank, a small handful of neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, most of the Gaza Strip and some areas of southern Israel on condition that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state and Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip disarm.
The plan also calls for allowing Israel to annex settlements, granting the Jewish state sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and overriding security control west of the Jordan River, and barring Palestinians from entering Israel as refugees.
Abbas declared that “Jerusalem is not for sale” and the Palestinian people’s “rights are not for sale or bartering.”
“Will we accept a state without Jerusalem? It is impossible for any Palestinian, Arab, Muslim or Christian child to accept that,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during an event with President Donald Trump in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, to announce the Trump administration’s much-anticipated plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The Palestinians have long demanded the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state along 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The plan outlines a Palestinian capital in neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the West Bank situated on the side of the security barrier currently adjacent to areas under full or partial Palestinian control.
Abbas added that the Palestinians “are committed to fighting terrorism, but the world must understand that this people deserves a life.”
“We say to the world: We are not a terrorist people and we will never be one,” he said.
Since late 2017, the Trump administration has made several moves seen as marginalizing the Palestinians: recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians and the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees, and closing the Palestine Liberation Organization representative office in Washington.
In response, the Palestinians have cut off ties with both the White House and the US State Department, but they have continued to communicate with American security officials.
Abbas also said that the Palestinians would immediately begin taking measures to change “the [Palestinian] Authority’s functional role” in order to implement recommendations made by PLO institutions over the past couple of years.
The Palestinian Central Council and the Palestinian National Council, top PLO bodies, issued a number of recommendations in 2018 and 2019 including calls for ending security cooperation with Israel.
Abbas did not clarify what explicit measures the Palestinians would take, or whether they would do away with agreements with Israel or put an end to security coordination between Israeli and Palestinian security forces.
The Palestinians have frequently threatened to renege on agreements with Israel in response to previous disagreements, but have yet to follow through.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad also quickly rejected the plan on Tuesday. Many Palestinians protested around the West Bank and Gaza, as the US embassy issued a travel advisory warning of potential terror attacks.
Before Trump spoke on Tuesday, Abbas held a rare phone call with Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh, in which they advocated for Palestinians standing together to “confront” the plan, the official PA news site Wafa reported. Abbas’s Fatah faction has been at loggerheads with Hamas for over a decade.
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**************************************Abbas…An Unconscious Humourist***********************************
As soon as I read the Abbas ‘renunciation”, I was immediately reminded of the old Leslie Sarony song, of the same name that Abbas spits, with the last two lines of each chorus ending in;
“No, No, A thousand times No, I’d rather die than say yes”…….
I recall people singing it, as a very young kid in Dublin…. An Elsie Carlisle hit……as I found much later, although I suppose nobody remembers her……except me..
She was a terrific singer -especially with Bert Ambrose & His Orchestra
@ Sebastien Zorn:I concur completely your above comment. No return of land it is just used against Israel.
Bibi has said he agree to the deal ONLY because he believes the Pals will reject it and I concur with him on this. It is good to get the recognition of the USA for any land Israel applies sovereignty to.
Israel can apply sovereignty in stages without anyone’s permission. Territory relinquished can’t be recovered. Israel should never agree to relinquish territory again. Haven’t we learned from Oslo and Gaza? Southern Lebanon and even Sinai, which is an endless hotbed of terror? Land taken in defensive war is not land that must be rellinquished in actual military law.
@ greenrobot:Build in E1 NOW.
I am in favor of incentivized emigration to anywhere.
Realistic perspective whereas Ted, has a Jordan is Palestine Concept, neither Israeli government or the USA have embraced this. The King in Jordan may have problems but he is still the ruler and the Israeli Defense Establishment and Government do not want to see him go.
No Israeli political party that is likely to pass the threshold in the next election has taken up the banner of incentivized emigration to anywhere.
For this ever to become realistic the government must covertly endorse it and and one or two NGOs carry it out. I see no near term likelihood of this.
Building in E1 and offering incentivized emigration to Jordan is the way.
Fatah has put out a song on Facebook threatening anyone who cooperates with the Trump Plan (see PMW for words).
Trumps plan is dead for peace. That Pals have rejected it clearly and unequivocally. Israel hopefully will “annex” all the “Settlements” and the Jordan Valley and Northern Dead Sea Area”.
Israel should MOST IMPORTANTLY START BUILDING IN E1 AND CONNECT IT (MALLAH ADUMIM) TO JERUSALEM NOW!!
Abbas sent Bibi in handwritten Arabic a letter that said if Bibi annexes any land in the West Bank he can that at any time stop the Security Coordination and cancel all the agreements of the Oslo Accords.
So threat 99 in stopping the security cooperation.
The trouble for the Pals with their threats are that they can riot and shoot some rockets but if it gets bad they will get squashed.
Quoted in Robert Spencer’s Jihadwatch:
This is a formal declaration of war against Israel by the PLO and all Palestinian terror organizations. They promise to engage in armed “resistance” (terrorism) to sabotage the Trump plan.
To: The All Power Supreme Leader M. Abbas
Fr: WM
To His Royal Bad Karma Holocost Denierness,
OK, be that way.
This is an interesting op-ed in the Jerusalem Post. co-authored by Jason Greenblatt and the former director of Harvard’s Middle East Institute (naturally, he is an Arab and a former member of a Palestinian negotiating team. (So much for Harvard’s neutrality in the Arab-Israel conflict). Nevertheless, this Arab’s willingness to co-author an op-ed with Greenblatt, in which he writes that the Palestinians should accept the Trump-Greenblatt plan as a basis for negotiations with Israel, may indicate that the terrorists are beginning to lose their grip on Palestinian public opinion.
The polite term for the fascist kleptocrats who want to continue doing everything in their power to ruin that region is ‘a bunch of recta’.
Listen or read abb’arse if trumps plans really upset, hurt, offend you pull up your socks and quick march from whence you came.
North Africa sounds inviting, then there’s plenty of boats to a far better thing you can do such as sail to France.
Just imagine stoning tour of France riders, removing art objects from the lourve as they offend you, turn Eiffel tower into a mosq, such fun can be had.