TEL AVIV – The map featured in President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled peace plan for a Palestinian state side by side with Israel is nothing more than “Swiss cheese,” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday in a damning condemnation of the proposal which he said obliterated Palestinian rights.
“This plan should not be considered an international reference for negotiations. It is an Israeli-American preemptive plan to put an end to the question of Palestine,” he said.
The proposal, he said, “legitimizes what is illegal: settlement and annexation of Palestinian land.”
Trump’s plan would see the establishment of a contiguous but demilitarized Palestinian state on most of the West Bank with parts of eastern Jerusalem that are outside the Israeli security fence as its capital.
Jerusalem would remain undivided and under Israeli control.
Israel would be allowed to annex all Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Jordan Valley.
“This plan violates international legitimacy,” he said. “It annuls the legitimacy of Palestinian rights, our right to self-determination, freedom and independence of our own state.”
Referring to Israel’s annexation of Jewish West Bank settlements, Abbas continued, “It legitimized what is illegal, settlements and confiscation of land and annexation of Palestinian land.”
On Monday, Palestinian officials denied nixing a bid for a draft resolution at the Security Council opposing the American proposal, entitled Vision for Peace. However, various officials have confirmed member states, including European countries, did not support the text of the resolution, which was drafted by Tunisia and Indonesia.
Even without the U.S.’ veto, the resolution was said to have not garnered enough support by other member states, prompting Abbas to pull it at the last minute in an attempt to save face.
The American proposal, Abbas said, is “the entrenchment of occupation and confiscation of occupying force by military regime… strengthening the apartheid regime.”
“Jerusalem is no longer under the sovereignty of the state of Palestine,” he said.
Jerusalem was never under Palestinian sovereignty and such a state has never existed.
“Jerusalem is occupied land. Who has the right to give this as a gift to one state or another? We came before you,” Abbas went on.
Abbas held up a series of maps often employed by anti-Israel groups that conveniently leave out any indication that pre-1948 Palestine was actually territory belonging to the Ottoman Empire and then the British Mandate, and not, as posited by Abbas, a sovereign Arab state of Palestine that was eventually stolen by Israel.
Abbas praised Palestinian protesters who “took to the streets by thousands and hundreds of thousands in the West Bank and Gaza, although it’s freezing outside.”
He rejected senior Trump advisor Jared Kushner’s claim that the Palestinians have missed countless opportunities for peace.
In a complete perversion of history, Abbas, whose 1982 doctoral dissertation denied the Holocaust, made the claim that the Oslo peace accords failed because of the assassination of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and not because of Palestinian intransigence. After the accords were signed and before Rabin’s death, the Palestinians launched a terror rampage in which 10 Israeli buses were bombed and dozens of Israelis killed.
“We have reached peace without the intervention of anyone, in Oslo. We were willing to commit to that agreement, until we reach a solution. However, they killed Rabin,” Abbas said.
Speaking to Israeli media before the UN session, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon accused Abbas of being “well-versed in the art of double-speak,” and rightly predicted that Abbas would appear before the security council and claim that he wants peace, while he “remains committed to incitement at home… encouraging Palestinian violence against Israelis.”
After Abbas’ remarks, Danon called on Abbas to return to the negotiating table with Israel.
“If Abbas was truly interested in peace, he wouldn’t be here, he would be in Jerusalem,” Danon said. “Complaining instead of action – that is not leadership. Abbas says he wants sovereignty for the Palestinian people, but he has done everything to avoid it. The call for sovereignty has become a battle call, rather than an actual goal, a way to keep the conflict alive,” he said.
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