PA Announces 'Total Rejection' Of U.S. Peace Plan

Savaging Trump peace plan, Palestinians again threaten to dissolve PA

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, suggested on Sunday that the Palestinians could dissolve the PA, after US President Donald Trump indicated that he will release his administration’s long-awaited plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this week.

“The leadership will hold a series of meetings on all levels — including the factions and organizations — to announce its total rejection of conceding Jerusalem,” Abu Rudeineh told the Voice of Palestine, the official PA radio station, according to the government-run Wafa news site.

“The leadership will study all options including the fate of the [Palestinian] National Authority and any decision made will be supported by the Arabs and international community,” he added.

The Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership has frequently threatened in the past to dissolve the PA and transfer responsibility for providing services to Palestinians to Israel, but it has yet to take major steps in that direction.

If the Palestinians were to dissolve the PA, tens of thousands of public workers would lose their jobs.

Other Palestinian officials explicitly threatened to withdraw from key provisions of the Oslo Accords, which define the PA’s relations with Israel, if Trump announces his peace plan. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told AFP that the Palestine Liberation Organization reserved the right “to withdraw from the interim agreement” if Trump unveils his plan.

The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement, signed in Washington in 1995, sought to put into practice the first Oslo peace deal agreed two years earlier. Sometimes called Oslo II, the interim agreement set out the scope of Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza. The interim pact was only supposed to last five years while a permanent agreement was finalized but it has tacitly been rolled over for more than two decades.

Channel 12, citing unnamed Israeli sources, reported on Thursday that the American administration’s plan calls for Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem and 100-plus settlements, as well as the establishment of a Palestinian state, on condition that the Hamas terror group gives up its weapons and the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, with Jerusalem as its capital.

The report also said that the US plan would grant Israel full security control in the Jordan Valley, and provide for some minor land swaps and a possible absorption of some Palestinian refugees in Israel; it also said if Israel accepts the plan and the Palestinians reject it, Israel would have US support to begin annexing settlements unilaterally.

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