Palestinians cut ties with US and Israel

The Palestinian Authority has cut all ties with the US and Israel, including those relating to security, after rejecting US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday.

Mr Abbas was in Cairo to address the Arab League, which backed the Palestinians in their opposition to Mr Trump’s plan. The plan, endorsed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calls for the creation of a demilitarised Palestinian state under near-total Israeli security control.

It would allow Israel to annexe all its West Bank settlements — which most of the international community view as illegal — as well as the Jordan Valley, which accounts for roughly a quarter of the West Bank.

In return, the Palestinians would be granted statehood in Gaza, scattered chunks of the West Bank and some neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Jerusalem, all linked together by a new network of roads, bridges and tunnels.

Israel would control the state’s borders and airspace and maintain overall security authority.

The plan would abolish the right of return for Palestinian refugees displaced by the 1948 war and their descendants, a key Palestinian demand.

Critics of the proposals say this would rob Palestinian statehood of any meaning.

“We’ve informed the Israeli side ... that there will be no relations at all with them and the US including security ties,” Mr Abbas told the Cairo meeting.

Israel had no immediate comment on his remarks. Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s security forces have long co-operated in policing areas of the occupied West Bank that are under Palestinian control.

The EU and the UN consider Israeli settlements on land captured in war to be a violation of international law and insist that negotiations are the only way forward.