Abbas Pressured by Saudi MBS to Forget Palestinian Refugees, Quds

T. Belman. The more I think about Trump’s recognition or Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the less enamoured I am. Tilerson threw cold water on it saying it wouldn’t be happenning for years. Nothing has changed on the ground. Israel didn’t need Trujmp’s recognition because there is no way a deal coulod be cut with Israel if Jerusalem were not included. And that leaves open the possibility that Israel would agree to east Jerusalem being the capital of Palestine. We are no closer to a deal in which Israel gets Jerusalem as its undivided capital, .

Secondly the Arabs are now asking the world to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. It might do that in opposition to Trump’s recognition.

Trump’s recognition is touted to be an embrace of reality. The whole Arab narrative is a denial of reality. Israel relies on the truth and the Arabs relie on falsity. But the world including the US see this as two competing narratives that require concessions on both sides. This must be rejected. The truth is that Jews have the legal right to all of the “disputed land”. That should be the starting point of any discussion.

FARSI NEWS

TEHRAN (FNA)- Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman has laid increasing pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to give up his quest for the Palestinian refugees’ right of return and for making Quds the capital of a Palestinian state, an Arab media outlet disclosed.

“Bin Salman has told Mahmoud Abbas to forget about the Quds case and the refugees’ right to return to their country and start a bid to establish a state in Gaza,” the Arabic-language al-Arabi al-Jadid news website reported on Tuesday, adding that the de facto ruler has promised “Abbas huge financial aid in return”.

To get rid of the difficult conditions prevailing over the meeting with the Saudi crown prince, Abbas has asked bin Salman to present his offer in written so that he could put it under discussion at a meeting of the central committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), added the report.

Earlier, Reuters had also reported that bin Salman had proposed $100 bln to Abbas if he agreed with the recent US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s capital.

The US president last Wednesday defied global warnings, and said Washington formally recognizes Jerusalem al-Quds as the “capital” of Israel, and will begin the process of moving its embassy to the occupied city, breaking with decades of American policy despite widespread international opposition.

In anticipation of Trump’s move, 151 members of the UN General Assembly voted last week to adopt a rare resolution that denounced Israel as the “occupying power” of Jerusalem al-Quds, a city that is holy to Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike.

The city has seen heightened tensions since 2015, when the Israeli military introduced restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque — Islam’s third holiest site.

Over 300 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli soldiers ever since.

Israel lays claim to the entirety of al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital while Palestinians want its Eastern part as the capital of a future state for themselves.

Palestinian leaders have warned that the potential relocation would fuel strong reaction in the region and deliver a death blow to any prospect of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump’s move which overturns decades of US foreign policy has triggered a fresh wave of unrest in the Middle East.

December 13, 2017 | 7 Comments »

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  1. t’s a game-changer, says Eugene Kontorovich, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern University and director of the international law department at Jerusalem’s Kohelet Policy Forum: “President Trump explicitly included the Kosel and Temple Mount in the description of the Jerusalem he was recognizing, thus confirming Jewish sovereignty over the holy sites.”

    However, didn’t Trump say Jerusalem “must remain a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross, and where Muslims worship at al-Aqsa Mosque”? Does that mean the status quo remains, and nothing’s really changed?

    “The status quo is about access, not sovereignty,” Kontorovich says. “What’s crucial here is the borders.”

    However, Trump also said he wasn’t taking a position on the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. Doesn’t that also mean nothing has changed?

    “He said that final status borders will be set by agreement,” Kontorovich says. “He recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s [but they can give it away in any future negotiation].”

    Kontorovich also says it explodes the notion that no major country would ever recognize Israeli claims across the 1949 Armistice Lines. Jews in the Old City, Mount of Olives, and other historic and holy areas are no longer settlers according to the US. “This is a policy reversal that supporters of Israeli concessions claimed could never happen, and it has.”

    Article with six more points continues at http://www.mishpacha.com/Browse/Article/9308/Israels-Capital-Gain-7-Takeaways-on-Trumps-Jerusalem-Proclamation#.WjJGoteemKM.twitter

  3. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel makes clear that U.S. – Israeli relations will no longer be held hostage to the Palestinian issue and that the United States values Israel on its own merits. While the President stated that he would like to see peace between Israel and the Palestinians, his primary goal is Israel’s welfare and her continued good relations with the United States and not a fictitious peace process, for its own sake.

    Trump’s statement informs the Palestinians that at least from here on out, they will pay a price for continued intransigence, denial of reality and refusal to compromise. They have now lost Jerusalem and it seems clear that if they continue down this road President Trump might just as easily abandon the fiction of Palestine altogether

    .https://devinsper.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/trump-changes-the-dynamic-of-middle-east-diplomacy/

  4. @ Ted Belman:
    Ted, It changes that USA has overtly agree to back Israel in Jerusalem and gave lip service the PA. Israel now has an ally with the Trump Administration unlike Obama. Israel will not have to do dances to avoid getting bullied by the POTUS.

    Brett Stevens, wrote the following in the NY Times:

    It belatedly aligns American words with deeds. It aligns word as well as deed with reality. And it aligns the United States with the country toward which we are constantly professing friendship even as we have spent seven decades stinting it of the most basic form of recognition.

    Slowly some other countries will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (Russia, Czech Republic, Hungary to start) even if it is just the Western part of the city to start. That is NEW.

    USA recognize will free up Israel to do other things. Expansion of Jerusalem borders (defacto application of Israeli Law) to Malaah Adumium, Gush Etzion,,,,and more. You will see Israeli expansion in building since Trump is backing Israel. Abbas has climbed out on a thin branch hanging over a cliff with him taking verbal swipes at Trump. No serious push back will come to Israeli building and creating facts on the ground.

    If we get into another war in Gaza no Obama/Kerry will be around to say you must stop killing the terrorists. Trump hates the terrorists and wants them dead. Israel will have a freer hand in destroying Hamas.

  5. @ Bear Klein:
    See my preface today. The above preface was based on the fact that we woul;d never have agreed to abandon Jerusalem with or without America’s blessing. So in that sense, this blessing changes little. In this preface, I ignored the Muslim narrative.

  6. Ted, Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. That is very significant because the whole strategy of Abbas has been to get the USA to bully Israel into giving in to all his demands. Trump has turned the tables on Abbas and said anything the Pals get must be agreed to by Israel whose capital city is Jerusalem. Abbas said this is a huge slap in the face.

    Israel now has veto power over a Pal State as Trump said if both sides agree to this he will agree. He has repeatedly stated he will not force either side to do things they are opposed to. Since Israel controls the ground it holds all the cards.

    Ted, there is NOT going to be a deal between Israel and the Palestinians. They will NOT agree to a Jewish State nor make any compromises. Israel is not going to pull the IDF out of Judea/Samaria nor is going to give up Jerusalem.

  7. Therre are dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands of “Holy” cities dotted all over the world which are NOT the capital cities of those countries. So this argument is specious at “best” and at worst, is a damned barefaced lie. The Arabs have NO claim to Jerusalem at all, and their “famous” mosque Al Aksa, is a converted rebuilt Byzantine Church, which they regard as “Holy”, but which only has a claim to the land it stands on and a very limited surround. This leaves the large majority of the rest of the Mount as part of the Jewish Temple Complex, which it always has been in the past.

    The Mount is historically famous because of the Jewish Temples and the mosque was never mentioned, it being only a prayer building for Muslims. Even in the 20th century the Mount was being described this way.

    Many are confused by the claim of the Muslims to the whole Mount, and erroneously believe that the eye catching Dome of the Rock,,is the Mosque, which it is not, not a mosque at all, The Aksa is at the southern edge of the platform hundreds of feet away from the Dome.

    Interestingly the Dome was not built by Omar, although his name became attached to it, but by a rival caliph, Abd-El-Malik, who was a Shia, and opposed to the Sunna caliph in Mecca, the purpose of the Dome being to attract Arabs away from Mecca towards HIS edifice, built as a meeting place, never as a mosque.,