‘We will not kneel and we will not surrender’
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said ‘‘a thousand no’s’’ to the Mideast peace plan announced yesterday by United States President Donald Trump, which strongly favours Israel.
The Palestinians remain committed to ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a state with its capital in east Jerusalem, Abbas said at a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where the Westernbacked Palestinian Authority is headquartered. ‘‘After the nonsense that we heard today we say a thousand no’s to the Deal of The Century,’’ he said.
The plan would create a Palestinian state in parts of the West Bank, but would allow Israel to annex its settlements in the occupied territory. The plan would allow the Palestinians to establish a capital on the outskirts of east Jerusalem but would leave most of the city under Israeli control.
‘‘We will not kneel and we will not surrender,’’ Abbas said, adding that the Palestinians would resist the plan through ‘‘peaceful, popular means’’.
The Islamic militant group Hamas rejected the ‘‘conspiracies’’ announced by the US and Israel and said ‘‘all options are open’’ in responding to the Trump administration’s plan.
‘‘We are certain that our Palestinian people will not let these conspiracies pass. So, all options are open. The (Israeli) occupation and the US administration will bear the responsibility for what they did,’’ senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said as he participated in one of several protests that broke out across the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Protesters burned tyres and pictures of Trump, and Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Abbas held an emergency meeting with other Palestinian factions, including Hamas, to discuss a unified response to the plan. Abbas had rejected the deal before it was announced saying the US was hopelessly biased toward Israel.
The Palestinians cut off all contacts with the Trump administration after it recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel more than two years ago and moved the embassy there.
Late yesterday, Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli forces on the outskirts of Ramallah, near the Jewish settlement of Beit El.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Trump’s initiative ‘‘provides an occasion to re-launch the urgently needed efforts towards a negotiated and viable solution’’ to the conflict. He said the EU would ‘‘study and assess the proposals put forward’’.
He reiterated the bloc’s commitment to a ‘‘negotiated and viable two-state solution that takes into account the legitimate aspirations of both the Palestinians and the Israelis’’.
Benjamin