Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday sent an emergency delegation to meet with Israeli officials to express their anger over the Trump peace plan, including a personal note to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Channel 12 reported.
According to the report, the delegation, led by PA Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh, met with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon in order to tell Israel that the PA views the plan presented Tuesday in Washington as voiding the Oslo peace accords and that the Palestinians now felt free to break their commitments, including security cooperation.
In recent years Kahlon and al-Sheikh have held regular consultations, mainly over economic cooperation, in the absence of formal talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
The Palestinian delegation reportedly gave Kahlon a handwritten note in Arabic from Abbas to Netanyahu.
“The plan is an American and Israeli disavowal of the Oslo accords, and so the Palestinian Authority now sees itself as free to disregard the agreements with Israel, including security cooperation,” Channel 12 quoted the note as saying.
The report said Abbas wanted to inform Israel before he traveled to a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, where he is expected to make similar announcements, before visiting other countries to try to rally support.
The Palestinians reacted angrily to US President Donald Trump’s plan after it was announced Tuesday and Abbas calling it the “the slap of the century.”
“We say a thousand times: No, no and no to the ‘deal of the century,’” Abbas said, adding that the US plan “will not come to pass” and that “our people will send it to the dustbins of history.”
The plan does not include some key demands by Palestinians, such as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem being part of their capital, the return of Palestinian refugees to live in Israel, and the removal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It also allows for broad Israeli annexation moves. It provides for a future Palestinian state subject to a series of conditions and limitations, with Israel retaining overall security control of the area.
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