TEL AVIV – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told Arab states on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s long-awaited peace plan has “nothing to offer” the Palestinians and added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no interest in peace.
Addressing the Arab League in Cairo, Abbas said the U.S. could offer nothing to the Palestinians in light of the moves it has taken against them, including recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the subsequent transfer of the U.S. embassy there, as well as cutting aid.
“What’s left to offer us? There is nothing left to offer us that would make us happy. They took Jerusalem and the occupied territories, canceled the [rights of the] refugees and legitimized settlements. They want to fool us. They have nothing to offer us. Even if they want to offer something, it will be worse than anything else.”
“We can’t hear that the holy city of Jerusalem has been annexed to Israel,” he said. “After this crime, what can we expect?”
He also addressed President Donald Trump’s recent decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
“We don’t accept the annexation of the Golan and Jerusalem,” Abbas said. “These are all Arab territories. They are all occupied territories, and Israel needs to quickly withdraw from them.”
Abbas, whose PA apparatus routinely incites against the existence of Israel, slammed Netanyahu for not having faith in peace with the Palestinians.
“We know from his positions, statements and insinuations that he doesn’t believe in peace between us and them,” he said. “Therefore, he was always saying that there is no Palestinian partner, although we extend our hand to him for real peace based on international legitimacy.”
Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 between late PLO leader Yasser Arafat and late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, the only time the Palestinians were hopeful for achieving peace was during the tenure of former prime minister Ehud Olmert, Abbas claimed.
“We negotiated with Olmert and had discussions with him, but we didn’t reach any results, because during the negotiations we found that he was being taken to prison.”
Abbas, however, denied that he had received any concrete offers from Olmert. “The truth is,” he said, “there were understandings between us which were not completed, and which did not tackle all the issues.”
He accused Israel of “entirely breaching the Oslo Accords and all the subsequent agreements with the Palestinians, especially the Paris Economic Protocol.”
“Until when will we tolerate Israel’s failure to honor all the agreements, while we are committed to all the agreements?”
Abbas’ claims fly in the face of reality, as the Palestinians have systematically rejected every offer of peace, beginning in 1947 with the UN Partition Plan. Following Oslo, the Palestinians launched a string of terror attacks in the mid-1990s resulting in the deaths of dozens of Israelis. At Camp David in 2000, the Palestinians turned down an offer from then-prime minister Ehud Barak in which over 90% of the West Bank would be turned over for a future Palestinian state along with Gaza; east Jerusalem would be designated as the Palestinian capital.
In his speech to the Arab League, Abbas said that his four face-to-face meetings with Trump left him with the impression that the U.S. president endorsed a Palestinian state.
“When we met for the fourth time, I had a feeling that we could resolve the Palestinian issue in half an hour,” Abbas said. “Trump told me that he believes in the two-state solution on the basis of the 1967 borders. He even supported the idea of deploying NATO forces in the West Bank.”
Two weeks later, Abbas was shocked to hear Trump’s Jerusalem declaration, he said, and angered that the U.S. had also decided to cut funds to the Palestinian refugee agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
“Why is he doing this? Why did he change his position? Our first response was to stop contacts with the U.S. administration, except for security relations. We cooperate with the U.S. in combating terrorism. We are committed to combating all forms of terrorism,” Abbas said on Sunday.
Also on Sunday, a senior Fatah official told Al-Khaleej Online news that Arab states, led by U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, were exerting “immense pressure” on the Palestinians to accept Trump’s so-called “deal of the century.”
“Some Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, are very interested in the deal of the century,” the official said. “They are using all means, including political and financial blackmail, to force the Palestinians to accept the deal of the century despite all the dangers it poses to the Palestinian cause.”
He added, however, that the Palestinian leadership would not cave in to any Arab, American or Israeli plot to force them to accept the peace plan.
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