PA Turning To Russia To Play Greater Role In Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Palestinians turn to Russia to bypass US peace plan

The Palestinians are urging Russia to play a greater role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as they embark on an international campaign to bypass the Trump administration’s peace plan, which is scheduled to be released in the coming months, Palestinian officials said on Tuesday.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to visit Moscow in the coming months to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has spoken multiple times of hosting a Middle East peace process that would include direct talks between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas.

PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki said on Tuesday that Abbas was prepared to meet with Netanyahu without preconditions if Russia is prepared to host such a summit.

Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh told a group of Israeli journalists that the PA wanted the international community to back its opposition to US President Donald Trump’s plan unless it was based on the pre-1967 lines and previous international understandings.

The Trump administration has kept details of the peace plan under wraps, but it has already clearly stated that the plan, known as the “deal of the century” will deviate from past plans.

Abbas will be in Cairo next week “to inform all the Arab countries that we cannot accept the situation in which we are living now,” Abu Rudeineh said. He added that Abbas will then travel to Brussels to meet with the European Union.

Several delegations will be sent to Moscow, China and Japan, he said.

Any future peace deal, he said, should be concluded with the P5+1, such as was done with the Iran deal. The world powers he indicated would be Russia, China, Great Britain, France, the US and Germany.

Abbas, in a speech before the African Union in Addis Ababa, called for supporting the idea of an international peace conference. Abbas and several PA officials have repeatedly rejected Trump’s unseen plan, dubbing it a “conspiracy designed to liquidate the Palestinian cause and national rights.”

“We are working to convince Russia and other countries to increase their intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as Trump prepares to announce his unacceptable plan,” another PA official told The Jerusalem Post. “We have no confidence in the Trump administration, whose representatives have fully endorsed the positions of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”