Cairo, February 1 (RHC)-- Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, attended the emergency meeting with the Arab League's foreign ministers in Cairo, alongside chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Abbas announced that the Palestinian Authority will stop recognizing ties with the United States and Israel after the White House announced the long-awaited outline of a controversial pro-Tel Aviv scheme.
"We are informing you that there will be no relations with you (Israel) and the United States," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the Arab League meeting Saturday. Palestinians had already stopped recognizing any intermediary role by the U.S. in late 2017, when President Donald Trump took all his predecessors’ pro-Israeli measures to a whole new level by recognizing the holy city of Jerusalem al-Quds in the Tel Aviv-occupied West Bank as Israel’s “capital.” The move by Washington came in the face of historic Palestinian demands that the city’s eastern part serve as the capital of their future state.
Abbas said: "I will not go down in history as someone who sells or gives away Jerusalem, because Jerusalem is not mine but everyone's."
Commenting further on his decision to break relations with Washington and Tel Aviv, Abbas said the ties that would be affected include any standing “security cooperation” between Tel Aviv and the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli regime has historically considered the security coordination to be a means of preempting Palestinian retaliation against its incessant acts of aggression. Israel would have to "bear responsibility as an occupying" entity for the Palestinian territories, the Palestinian president affirmed.
Abbas said the decision follows the U.S. and Israel's "disavowal of signed agreements and international legitimacy." He added that Trump's plan, dubbed “The Deal of the Century” was in "violation of the [autonomy] accords," referring to the Oslo Accords.
The accords were signed by late leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, and former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in Washington DC, in 1993 and Taba, Egypt, in 1995. The purported goal of the accords was to achieve peace based on the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and to recognize the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
The U.S. had announced the so-called Deal of the Century -- a brainchild of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner and other key pro-Israeli figures -- years ago, but had withheld the details.
Trump revealed the general provisions of the scheme on Tuesday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side. Palestinian sides were conspicuous by their absence at the ceremony given their vociferous disagreement with the plot.
