The Palestinian leadership will no longer work with the United Nation’s peace envoy, a senior official said Thursday, accusing him of overstepping his role by seeking a deal between Israel and terror group Hamas.
Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said it had informed the UN secretary-general that envoy Nickolay Mladenov was “no longer acceptable” to the Palestinian government.
Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, said that the Palestinians’ decision to sever ties with Mladenov would increase their “isolation” worldwide.
“After the Palestinians said ‘No’ to Israel and ‘No’ to the Americans, they’re now saying ‘No’ to the UN as well,” Danon said in a statement, adding that the decision would “continue to lead the Palestinian Authority to international isolation while harming the Palestinians.”
Mladenov, alongside Egypt, has been seeking a long-term truce agreement between Hamas and the Jewish state, without including PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s internationally recognized government in the indirect negotiations.
Abbas’s Fatah movement and the PA have vehemently opposed any possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist group that rules Gaza. They have demanded reconciliation between the rival Palestinian factions before any ceasefire be reached, and asserted that the PLO is the sole Palestinian party that can negotiate such a deal.
Last Saturday, another high-ranking Fatah official accused Mladenov of working on behalf of US President Donald Trump’s administration and intervening in internal Palestinian affairs.
“He is a servant of the American administration,” Majed Fityani, the secretary-general of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, told Palestine TV, the official PA channel. “He should… not be intervening in internal affairs. It is not his right or mandate to interfere, but he puts his nose in everything.”
PA prime minister refuses to host UN Mideast envoy at his office
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah refused to welcome United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nikolay Mladenov to his office last week, a senior Palestine Liberation Organization official said on Sunday.
In recent weeks, Ramallah-based Palestinian officials have criticized Mladenov over his role in efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
“The EU representative asked to bring Mladenov to a meeting with Prime Minister Hamdallah last week,” Ahmad Majdalani, a PLO Executive Committee member told The Times of Israel, referring to Ralph Tarraf, the European Union’s top diplomat in Jerusalem. “The prime minister refused to receive Mladenov.”
Tarraf and members of the European Parliament met with Hamdallah at his office in Ramallah on October 8.
An EU spokesperson said no UN representatives had planned to attend the meeting between the European officials and the PA prime minister.
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