Arabs Advising Abbas to Accept Trump Peace Plan Or Risk Losing Out — Report
- Emphasis mine:
- Arabs Advising Abbas to Accept Trump Peace Plan Or Risk Losing Out — Report
by KHALED ABU TOAMEH, https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Arab diplomat tells Egyptian newspaper that Palestinians should take what they can now rather than reject proposal out of hand and see settlements grow unfettered.
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A number of Arab countries have advised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to accept whatever US President Donald Trump proposes in the context of his long-awaited Middle East peace plan, according to a Thursday report.
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The report in the the privately-owned Egyptian newspaper Al Shorouk cited an Arab diplomat in Cairo, who warned that the Palestinians may in the future “regret” not having accepted what they consider today to be too little.
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One key Arab country relayed a message to Abbas which stated that “a realistic reading of the situation makes it imperative that the Arabs and Palestinians accept whatever is available,” the diplomat told the paper. The paper described the unnamed diplomat as a “prominent” figure.
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“Wisdom requires accepting the maximum of what is available now,” the diplomat was quoted as saying. “The dealing should be in accordance with the logic of ‘take and negotiate’ so that we won’t be surprised after a few years that the monster of settlements has devoured the Palestinian territories.”
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The diplomat did not reveal the names of the Arab countries that had reportedly relayed the advice to Abbas, who has consistently rebuffed the nascent US peace plan.
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The US administration is expected to announce the main points of its peace plan in the coming weeks, the Egyptian newspaper said. Administration officials have said the plan is close to being finished, but have also refused to give a timeline for when it might be published.
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Abbas has denounced the purported plan as the “slap of the century” — a reference to the phrase “deal of the century” used by Trump himself to describe his peace initiative. Furious over the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy there, Ramallah has blackballed negotiators Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, and has pushed for a multilateral peace effort that sidelines Washington.
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Last month, a senior Hamas delegation headed by Ismail Haniyeh spent three weeks in Cairo, where its members held talks with Egyptian government officials on a number of issues, including the floundering reconciliation agreement with Abbas’s Fatah movement and ways of enhancing security measures along the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
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The Hamas official quoted the Egyptians as saying that Cairo was strongly opposed to the idea of “settling Palestinians in Sinai.”
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The Egyptian stance came in response to unconfirmed reports in some Arab media outlets that claimed that Trump’s peace plan includes transferring parts of Sinai to the future Palestinian state.
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