Palestinians shift policy on U.S.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told an international summit that the United States was no longer fit to mediate the Mideast conflict.
ISTANBUL — Breaking with years of courting the U.S., Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called Wednesday for the United Nations to replace Washington as a Mideast mediator and suggested he might not cooperate with the Trump administration’s much-anticipated effort to hammer out an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
At a summit in Turkey, Arab and Muslim leaders “rejected and condemned” President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — the trigger for Abbas’ sharp policy pivot — but most stopped short of backing his more combative approach toward Washington.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who hosted the summit, stuck to the harder line, saying at a news conference that it is “out of the question” for Washington to continue mediating between Israel and the Palestinians.
“That process is now over,” he said.
A possible Palestinian refusal to engage with the U.S. and growing backlash against Trump’s shift on Jerusalem, including from Arab allies, cast new doubt over the administration’s already seemingly remote chances of brokering a deal and succeeding where its predecessors have failed.
A senior White House official said the administration will continue to work on a Mideast plan “that we hope will offer the best outcome for both peoples” and will present it when the time is right. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of an expected public statement later Wednesday.
In seemingly shunning the U.S., Abbas finds himself in uncharted territory.
He does not have an immediate practical alternative to more than two decades of U.S.-led negotiations on the terms of Palestinian statehood. The Palestinians seek such a state on lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war — the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.
On the other hand, Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was decried by Palestinians and others in the region as a provocative show of proIsrael bias, making it difficult for Abbas to justify dealing with Washington as a mediator.
Trump’s argument that his announcement does not mean an endorsement of specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem has not gained traction in the ensuing uproar.
The fate of Jerusalem is a hot-button issue in the region, and even the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt — reportedly eager to help advance Trump’s Mideast efforts — cannot afford to be seen as soft on the religious claims of Muslims and political claims of Palestinians to the contested city. Israeliannexed east Jerusalem is home to Islam’s third-holiest shrine, along with the most revered site in Judaism and a major Christian church.
Wednesday’s extraordinary summit of the 57member Organization of Islamic Cooperation ended with a call on Trump to rescind an “unlawful decision that might trigger chaos in the region” and on the world to recognize east Jerusalem as the capital of a state of Palestine.
The final statement lacked tougher criticism of U.S. policy contained in an earlier draft, which questioned Washington’s continued role as a Mideast mediator.