Palestinians angrily reject Trump plan
RAMALLAH, WEST BANK
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said “a thousand no’s” Tuesday to the Mideast peace plan announced by President Donald Trump, which strongly favors Israel.
“After the nonsense that we heard today we say a thousand no’s to the Deal of The Century,” Abbas said in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where the Westernbacked Palestinian Authority is headquartered. He said the Palestinians remain committed to ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a state with its capital in east Jerusalem. “We will not kneel and we will not surrender,” he said. Palestinians would resist the plan through “peaceful, popular means,” he said.
Abbas rejected the deal before it was announced, saying the U.S. was hopelessly biased toward Israel.
The Islamic militant group ruling Gaza rejected the “conspiracies” announced by the U.S. and Israel and said “all options are open” in responding to the U.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 U.S. administration will bear the responsibility for what they did,” Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said.
Jordan, meanwhile, warned against any Israeli “annexation of Palestinian lands” and reaffirmed its commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines, which would include all the West Bank and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi warned of “the dangerous consequences of unilateral Israeli measures, such as annexation of Palestinian lands.”
Egypt urged Israelis and Palestinians to “carefully study” the plan and said it appreciates the administration’s efforts. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that it favors a solution that restores all the “legitimate rights” of the Palestinian people through establishing an “independent and sovereign state on the occupied Palestinian territories.”
Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab countries to have made peace with Israel.