PA slams Friedman over ‘false’ remarks
The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday accused US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman of making “false” statements about Israel’s plan to apply Israeli law to parts of the West Bank.
Nabil Abu Rudaineh, spokesman for the PA presidency, said the Palestinians rejected Friedman’s claim that it was up to Israel to decide on the plan.
“These statements are rejected and false,” Abu Rudaineh said. “The annexation decision is based on the Deal of the Century and American maps.”
The Deal of the Century refers to US President Donald Trump’s plan for Mideast peace, unveiled earlier this year.
The Trump administration’s “vision for peace” plan would allow Israel to annex 30% of the West Bank, including all settlements – about half of Area C, which, Friedman emphasized in an interview with The Jerusalem Post, includes “areas essential to Israel’s Biblical DNA.”
“We will be ready to address this issue if Israel is ready,” Friedman said. “Ultimately, as Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo said, it’s Israel’s decision. They have to decide what they want to do.”
Abu Rudaineh said in response that “neither Israel nor the US have the right or legitimacy to take any steps contradicting international law and legitimacy.” The Palestinian people, he added, will “thwart all the conspiracies and won’t allow such a step to pass without decisive measures.”
Abu Rudaineh pointed out that PA President Mahmoud Abbas has warned that the Palestinians would walk away from all signed agreements with Israel if the annexation plan is implemented. On Monday night Abbas repeated his threat during a meeting of the Fatah Central Committee in Ramallah. It was Abbas’s first appearance in public since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in early March.
“I say before you that in the event that the Israeli government begins with this annexation, we will no longer be bound by all the agreements signed between us and them, as well as the American administration,” Abbas said during the meeting. “It was the Americans who came up with the Deal of the Century and inspired the Israelis about the annexation issue. The Americans were the ones who drove the Israelis towards this issue. Now the Americans are saying that they have nothing to do with this and that it’s Israel that makes the decisions.”
Abbas warned that the Palestinians won’t wait until the annexation plan is implemented. Once the plan is announced, he said, they will renounce all the agreements which they have committed to without exception.