Abbas will reject Trump’s new Middle East peace plan

PARIS: Palestinians will reject new Middle East peace proposals by US President Donald Trump, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday.

“The United States has proved to be a dishonest mediator in the peace process and we will no longer accept any plan from it,” Abbas told a joint press conference in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Macron repeated his earlier condemnation of the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but he also ruled out recognizing Palestine as a state, which France has considered before.

“The Americans have marginalized themselves and I am trying to not do the same thing,” Macron said.

The US decision on Jerusalem continues to reverberate in the Middle East, and European diplomats are pessimistic about Trump’s new peace plan, which is being prepared behind closed doors and will be presented to both sides early in 2018.

US Vice President Mike Pence postponed a trip to the region this week after Palestinian and Arab Christian leaders refused to meet him.

On Thursday evening in New York, the 193-member General Assembly adopted by 128 to nine with 35 abstentions a resolution that rejected the US decision on Jerusalem.

Abbas criticized efforts by the US to intimidate countries before the vote.

“I hope others will learn the lesson and understand that you cannot impose solutions by using money and trying to buy off countries,” he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the UN vote showed the illegality of the US decision, and urged Washington to withdraw it.

Abbas’ visit to Paris less than a fortnight after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has raised speculation that Macron may mediate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

However, he and French diplomats have ruled out any French initiative, and insist that the American effort must run its course first.

Macron, 40, has emerged as a dynamic international figure since his election in May, but his team insists he is focused on reforming the EU, avoiding instability in Lebanon, and anti-terror efforts in Syria and west Africa.

Nevertheless, Abbas, like Netanyahu before him, praised Macron at the Paris news conference, which was notable for the warmth of the exchanges and the relaxed body language.

“We have trust in you. We respect the efforts made by you and we count heavily on your efforts,” Abbas told him.

Macron said he had “committed myself very clearly to doing everything” to further the peace process and would visit the Palestinian territories in 2018 and “intensify” contacts between the French and Palestinian governments.

“Palestine is not on its own. We will work so that she can live within sound and recognized borders, in security alongside Israel, with Jerusalem as the capital of the two states,” he said.

Many analysts in Washington believe the US remains the only power able to mediate in the crisis.

“There’s been peaks and valleys before on this issue,” said David Makovsky, a peace process veteran and senior fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“If I had a dollar every time people said ‘Oh, it’s over now, the US is not the broker’,” he said.