Abbas says Palestinians won’t accept any American peace plan
PA President Abbas has also said that Palestinians would engage the US administration on its ideas to resolve the conflict
By ADAM RASGONUpdated: APRIL 12, 2018 06:34Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (R) and US President Donald Trump listen to anthems during a welcome ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Bethlehem on May 23, 2017(photo credit: THOMAS COEX / AFP)
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday said the Palestinians will not accept any US plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.He made the comment at the beginning of a conference in Ramallah about Jerusalem.“We honestly will not wait for anything from them, and we will not accept anything from them,” Abbas said, alluding to US President Donald Trump’s administration.Since Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and initiated the relocation of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to the city, Abbas has said on a handful of occasions that the Palestinians will not accept any US peace plan.However, in the same time period, he and some of his advisers have also said a few times that the Palestinians would engage the US administration on its ideas to resolve the conflict, if it were to enact certain policy changes.For example, on Monday, Abbas told the Fatah Central Committee the Palestinians would listen to the Trump administration’s ideas to resolve the conflict, if it were to endorse the two-state solution and recognize east Jerusalem as the capital of “the State of Palestine.”Multiple White House officials have recently said the Trump administration is finalizing a plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.In his speech, Abbas also accused Israel of opening fire on “peaceful protesters,” in the border region between Gaza and Israel, who he said were standing far away from the border fence separating the two territories.“You are clearly attacking someone really far away,” Abbas said, referring to Israeli snipers located on the Israeli side of the border fence.During the past two-and-a-half weeks, Palestinians in Gaza have participated in protests in the border region to support the return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to their former homes in Israel.
The IDF has described the protests in the border region as “violent riots,” asserting that protesters have thrown Molotov cocktails and rocks at its soldiers, opened fire on them, set tires on fire, exploded a bomb and attempted to pass into Israel’s territory.A total of 32 Palestinians have died in the border region since the start of the protests on March 30.Abbas also congratulated Hamas for “beginning to adopt popular peaceful resistance” during the protests.“I congratulate them for waking up. It has now been proven to them that popular, peaceful resistance is more effective than that nonsense,” Abbas said, in an apparent reference to armed conflict.On Monday, Hamas Politburo Chairman Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech that while the protests in the border region "are peaceful," the Islamist movement is still holding onto its weapons and intends to continue to develop them.Hamas's top officials have not renounced armed conflict with Israel.