Abbas stands up to Trump, so what now for Palestinians?
Proposals by the Palestinian Central Council include ending security cooperation
There seems to be no going back for Mahmoud Abbas after the Palestinian leader lashed out at US President Donald Trump over his reckless decision to recognise Occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Abbas’ pivot from quiet diplomacy to standing up to the US and Israel brings him in line with his aggrieved public.
Some questions and answers about the conflict:
What has changed?
The mostly unscripted barnburner — out of character for the typically buttoned-down Abbas — marked the culmination of his frustration with the US administration.
Abbas lashed out at Trump but also his ambassadors to the UN and to Israel, Nikki Haley and David Friedman.
His core message was to reject pre-emptively what he fears to be an upcoming US plan for a Palestinian ministate on only some of the lands captured and occupied by Israel in 1967 and without a foothold in Jerusalem. “We will not accept a deal America dictates,” Abbas said defiantly.
On Tuesday, a US official said the Trump administration was withholding $65 million of the planned $125 million instalment for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which focuses on giving health care, education and social services to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
What follows?
A day after Abbas’ ‘exit speech’ from two decades of intermittent, US-led talks with Israel, the Palestinian Central Council called for suspending the PLO’s 1993 recognition of Israel, halting security coordination with Israel and ending Palestinian compliance with interim peace deals from the mid-1990s. These so-called Oslo Accords had created the Palestinian autonomy government, headed by Abbas since 2005, and defined Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Implementing the council decisions could quickly escalate tensions with the hardline government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and possibly bring about the collapse of Abbas’ financially fragile self-rule government which administers parts of the West Bank. Ending compliance with the Oslo Accords could also remove any justification for the continued existence of the Palestinian Authority.
What is the alternative?
Abbas hopes to generate more pressure on Israel, including international sanctions, to force an end to its halfcentury-old occupation, said PLO official Hanan Ashrawi.
“Without accountability, without Israel understanding that there is a price to be paid for its intransigence, it is not going to budge,” she said.
But there are no firm commitments of support, despite sweeping condemnation of Trump’s Jerusalem move in recent UN Security Council and General Assembly votes.
Europe, for years relegated by Washington to the role of Middle East paymaster, hasn’t signalled a new assertiveness in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.