–Arab League rejects Trump’s plan, says it does not meet ‘minimum rights and aspirations of Palestinian people’
GAZA: The Palestinian Authority has cut all ties with the United States and Israel, including those relating to security, after rejecting a Middle East peace plan presented by US President Donald Trump, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday.
Abbas was in Cairo to address the Arab League, which backed the Palestinians in their opposition to Trump’s plan.
The blueprint, endorsed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calls for the creation of a demilitarised Palestinian state that excludes Jewish settlements built in occupied territory and is under near-total Israeli security control.
“We’ve informed the Israeli side … that there will be no relations at all with them and the United States including security ties,” Abbas told the one-day emergency meeting, called to discuss Trump’s plan. Israeli officials had no immediate comment on his remarks.
Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s security forces have long cooperated in policing areas of the occupied West Bank that are under Palestinian control. The PA also has intelligence cooperation agreements with the CIA, which continued even after the Palestinians began boycotting the Trump administration’s peace efforts in 2017.
Abbas also said he had refused to discuss the plan with Trump by phone, or to receive even a copy of it to study it: “Trump asked that I speak to him by phone but I said ‘no’, and that he wants to send me a letter … but I refused it.”
Abbas said he did not want Trump to be able to say that he, Abbas, had been consulted. He reiterated his “complete” rejection of the Trump plan, presented on Tuesday.
ARAB LEAGUE REJECTS TRUMP’S PLAN:
Meanwhile, the Arab League rejected Trump’s controversial Middle East plan, saying it did not meet the “minimum rights” of the Palestinians.
In a statement released afterwards, the League said it “rejects the US-Israeli ´deal of the century´ considering that it does not meet the minimum rights and aspirations of Palestinian people.”
Arab states also vowed “not to … cooperate with the US administration to implement this plan.”
They insisted on a two-state solution that includes a Palestinian state based on borders before the 1967 Six-Day War — when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza — and with east Jerusalem as its capital.
The only Arab ambassadors present at the plan´s unveiling were from Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates — three of Washington´s closest allies in a region where many nations host US forces.
Other Arab states gave carefully worded initial responses to the plan, which was strongly rejected by Palestinian leaders.
