Palestinian orders no contact with U.S.

CAIRO — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered a halt to all contacts with the U.S., citing its threat to close his authority’s mission in Washington, and won’t allow the issue to be used as leverage in any Middle East peace talks, a senior Palestinian official said late Monday.

Abbas’ office sent a note to government departments and embassies stating that “any meeting with an American official is banned regardless of the reason until they back down and treat us fairly,” said Azzam Al-Ahmad, a member of the Palestinian Authority administration. The suspension of contact doesn’t amount to severing diplomatic relations, he said.

President Donald Trump’s administration Friday put the Palestinians on notice that it will close the office unless they enter serious peace talks with Israel. The move came after the State Department determined the Palestinians had breached a provision stipulating that their presence in the U.S. capital would be terminated if they sought to prosecute Israelis at the International Criminal Court.

The status of the office is reviewed every six months. Abbas said in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September that the International Criminal Court should prosecute Israeli officials over settlement activity and aggression against Palestinians.

“We got the message, and we decided to stop relations with them because we will not allow them to put us at their mercy,” Al-Ahmad said, in Cairo for reconciliation talks among rival Palestinian factions.

Trump can keep the office open if he determines within 90 days that the Palestinians were in direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel. The Palestine Liberation Organization serves as the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington but does not have embassy status because the U.S. doesn’t recognize Palestinian statehood.

The two sides are not engaged in direct talks, and international mediation efforts have been stalled for years. However, Trump has said he’d like to broker a peace agreement between the two countries, saying it would be the “ultimate deal.” His sonin-law Jared Kushner has been leading his administration’s efforts to revive peacemaking.

Citing senior Israeli officials, Israel’s Channel 2 News reported Sunday that Trump’s team was preparing a peace outline that envisions a Palestinian state but does not call for the evacuation of Jewish settlements in West Bank.

Palestinian officials have said that closing the office would mean the U.S. administration could no longer act as an honest broker in potential peace talks.

The Palestinians are publicly supportive of international peace efforts but have remained skeptical that Trump and Kushner, who are close to Israel, could formulate a plan acceptable to them. Al-Ahmad said the Palestinians had not been consulted so far.

“This ‘deal of the century’ the U.S. is talking about, we have not seen a single clause of it,” Al-Ahmad said.

Meanwhile Tuesday, differences surfaced over the best way to implement the Palestinians’ reconciliation deal to end a decade-old rift that has hampered efforts toward statehood.

The Palestinian Authority, led by Abbas of Fatah, retook control of the Gaza Strip’s border crossings from the Islamist Hamas movement this month, a key step in the Egyptian-brokered reconciliation deal. Under the agreement, the consensus government is due to take full administrative control of Gaza by Dec. 1.

But disputes emerged over how to proceed, with Hamas keen to push for an agreement on other issues, including security and elections, and Fatah reluctant to move forward until the unity administration has assumed complete authority over the coastal enclave.

Al-Ahmad, the chief Fatah negotiator, said progress was slow but avoided assigning blame.

“Some are presenting obstacles to this process, obstacles we do not want,” he said. “But we hope that by Dec. 1 this phase will be completed and we can move on to the next phase in the talks.”

Hamas official Fawzy Barhoom issued a statement ahead of the talks saying the group’s vision for success involved tackling hot topics early on.

“The movement affirms the need to redouble efforts to ensure the success of this Egyptian-mediated dialogue,” he said on his Facebook page.

Salah el-Bardaweel, a Hamas negotiator, said in a short video sent to reporters that Fatah’s priorities were at odds with those of other factions. For the first time, a broad range of Palestinian opinion is present in Cairo, with representatives of 13 groups at the talks.

Abbas