Palestinians hailed the end of “the worst era” of President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday night, saying “an evil has distanced itself from us” and calling the incumbent “dangerous and destructive.”
“There has never been anything worse than the Trump era. Salvation from it is an achievement,” said Nabil Shaath, a senior advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and a former PA foreign minister.
Senior Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi celebrated what she called a “detrumped” United States.
“Trumpism must be carefully scrutinized & remedied to restore the human, moral & legal equilibrium within and beyond the U.S.. Such phenomena do not emerge from a vacuum,” she said.
“Now is the time for holistic & bold therapeutics,” Ashrawi said in a statement.
“We don’t expect miraculous transformation, but at least we expect the dangerous destructive policies of Trump to totally stop,” Ashrawi, who is a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Executive Committee, went on.
“They should change course and deal with the Palestinian question on the bases of legality, equality and justice and not on the basis of responding to special interests of pro-Israeli lobbies or whatever,” she added.
Both statements, notably, stopped short of congratulating Biden.
Last week, apparent vice president-elect Kamala Harris told The Arab American News that under a Joe Biden administration, the U.S. will work to restore ties with the Palestinians which the latter severed under the Trump administration. Harris said Biden will reopen the Palestinians diplomatic mission in Washington and renew humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians.
She added that Biden was committed to the two-state solution. Biden is also likely to oppose Israeli government steps to apply sovereignty over the West Bank.
“If we are going to live another four years with President Trump, God help us… and the whole world,” PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said before the elections.
Exiled Fatah Mohammad Dahlan, tipped as a successor to Abbas, praised Biden’s win as “a positive development which will put an end to the many dangers of the Trump-Netanyahu alliance to the Palestinian cause, as well as providing new horizons to the path of a new peace based on the two-state solution, as Biden promised personally during the campaign.”
“The end of Trump’s danger is not enough. It is upon us, first of all, to deal with the internal defects and end [political] division and elect legitimate leaders and frameworks who can confront changing developments,” he said according to the Times of Israel.
Hamas terror chief Ismail Haniyeh, with no apparent irony, called the Trump administration “extremist.”
“Our Palestinian people have suffered in prior decades from the bias of American administrations in favor of the occupation, and the Trump administration was the most extremist when it came to supporting the occupation over the national rights of the Palestinian people,” said Haniyeh.
“We call on President-elect Joe Biden to perform a historic correction to American policies which wronged our people, and which made the United States an accomplice to injustice and aggression, and which harmed regional and global stability,” Haniyeh added.
Senior Hamas official Khaled Mashaal said: “An evil has distanced itself from us with the end of the Trump administration.”
He added his hope that Abbas “will not hurry to agree to return to the pointless path of negotiations with the election of Biden.”
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