The Palestinian leadership is trying to kill the peace plan of US President Donald Trump, referred to as “deal of the century”, even before its unveiling, warned Trump’s Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt.
He urged the authority to hold fire until they see the details, saying it would be a mistake to declare it “dead on arrival.”
In an interview with Reuters, Greenblatt pushed back against Palestinian officials’ rebuke of the coming peace proposals that they believe will be heavily biased in favor of Israel and deliver a blow to their goal of statehood.
“The Palestinian Authority is trying to kill a plan they haven’t seen,” said Greenblatt, who has openly exchanged criticism with senior Palestinian officials.
Greenblatt and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are heading a team preparing to roll out the plan as early as June. The two intend to proceed despite deep skepticism among experts that they can succeed where decades of US-backed efforts have failed. However, further delays are always possible, given Middle East volatility, including tensions from recent Gaza violence.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has boycotted US peace efforts since late 2017 when the US president decided to move his embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in violation of a decades-US policy.
President Mahmoud Abbas had reiterated the firm Palestinian position rejecting the “deal of the century”.
He asserted that the PA does not expect US officials to offer anything important, because the “important things they have offered are all against us.”
“We reject everything that Kushner says, and we reject everything they [the Americans] have presented, be it with regard to Jerusalem, the refugees, borders, settlements or any others,” he was quoted as saying by the Wafa news agency.
The PA launched a major campaign against the plan and sent letters to delegations of various countries explaining the conditions and mechanisms of implementation of the decisions of the Central Council, in response to the US peace plan.
The Committee decided to disengage with Israel and redefine the relationship with it through the elimination of agreements and the embodiment of the Palestinian state under occupation.
