Abbas says ‘biased’ US cannot be sole mediator

UNITED NATIONS: The Palestinians will no longer accept the United States as the sole mediator in the Middle East peace process, their President Mahmud Abbas said on Thursday, accusing Donald Trump’s “biased” administration of undermining a two-state solution.

Speaking a day after the US president said he favoured a twostate solution to end the conflict between the Israel and Palestinians and revealed he would unveil a new peace plan within months, Abbas said Trump could not be regarded as a neutral broker. “We will also not accept sole American mediation in the peace process,” Abbas said in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly, saying the US president had shown that he was “biased” towards Israel since coming to power. “This administration has reneged on all previous US commitments, and has undermined the two-state solution, and has revealed its false claims of concern about the humanitarian conditions of the Palestinian people,” the Palestinian Authority president said.

Abbas criticised Trump’s decisions to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, his order to close the PLO office in Washington and to cut off aid funding, including to a UN agency that supports millions of Palestinian refugees.

“All such decisions threaten the Palestinian national cause and constitute an assault on international law and relevant United Nations resolutions,” said Abbas. “It is ironic that the American administration still talks about what they call the ‘deal of the century’. But what is left for this administration to give to the Palestinian people? Humanitarian solutions?”