Abbas rejects Trump team’s Mideast peace plan in speech to UN
UNITED NATIONS — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vehemently rejected the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan in a speech to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, calling it an attempt to keep the Palestinians from having an independent state.
He called for an international conference to pursue the two-state solution demanded in numerous U.N. resolutions.
Abbas called the
U.S. proposal “an Israeli-American preemptive plan in order to put an end to the question of Palestine.”
He told the Security Council the plan violates numerous U.N. resolutions, annuls Palestinian rights “to self- determination, freedom and independence in our own state,” and should not be considered a basis for negotiations.
“I have come to you on behalf of 13 million Palestinians to call for a just peace — that is all,” he said.
Israel’s U. N. Ambassador Danny Danon criticized Abbas’ position and told the council that if Abbas really wanted peace, he should be in Jerusalem talking to President Benjamin Netanyahu — not at the United Nations.
“Only when he steps down can Israel and the Palestinians move forward,” Danon said.
Abbas called on the international Quartet of Mideast mediators — the U.S., Russia, the European Union and United Nations — and the Security Council along with other countries “to hold an international conference for peace to implement resolutions of international legitimacy.”
He said “the United States cannot be the sole mediator,” saying the Palestinians have tried this before and will not agree to do so again.
President Donald Trump unveiled the U.S. initiative for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Jan. 28. The U.S. proposal envisions a disjointed Palestinian state that turns over key parts of the West Bank to Israel, siding with Israel on key contentious issues including borders and the status of Jerusalem and Jewish settlements.
Abbas held up a map of the fragmented U.S. proposal, saying “it’s like a Swiss cheese really.”
Later, he produced maps of progressively smaller proposed Palestinian states from the 1947 U.N. plan to partition Palestine at the end of the British mandate until the present map under the Trump plan.
The Palestinians seek all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war — for an independent state and the removal of many of the more than 700,000 Israeli settlers from these areas.