Gantz: Trump plan should be paused during pandemic
US President Donald Trump’s peace plan should not be advanced during the COVID-19 pandemic, even though it provides the best blueprint for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Alternate Prime Minister and Defense Minister Benny Gantz (Blue and White) said Sunday.
“Right now we have to deal with the giant crisis we have found ourselves in [COVID19], and then we can continue to head to where we need to go,” he told KAN Radio.
Gantz spoke while public dialogue on annexation waned, as attention was turned to the sharp rise in COVID-19 cases in Israel, from several hundred last month to a daily average of 1,000.
Yamina Party head Naftali Bennett, who opposes Trump’s peace plan, refused to overly focus on the matter during a virtual press conference.
“Now we have to deal with saving Israeli citizens from this disaster to their livelihood,” he said.
In Ramallah, however, the
Palestinian Authority pressed forward with its campaign against Israel’s plans to annex up to 30% of the West Bank that the Trump plan allows.
PLO Executive Committee Secretary-General Saeb Erekat spoke Sunday of forming an international coalition at the UN against Israeli annexation, according to Wafa, the Palestinian News Agency. The PA would annul its agreements with Israel and the United States, he said.
Israel and the US want to reduce the role of the PA to one of a service provider that would help perpetuate the “occupation,” Erekat said.
Later in the day, Erekat tweeted that he had received a letter from French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, which clarified that annexation would have consequences for the European Union’s relationship with Israel.
Trump’s plan lays out a fouryear blueprint to the creation of a two-state resolution to the conflict. But the PA has rejected that plan, holding fast to a two-state resolution at the pre-1967 lines.
The issue at hand is whether Israel can apply immediate