Fatah Deputy Leader: Trump’s Israel-Palestine Peace Plan Only Helps Netanyahu

• Fatah Deputy Leader: Trump’s Israel-Palestine Peace Plan Only Helps Netanyahu
  by http://www.laht.com/index.asp
  RAMALLAH, West Bank – Fatah vice-chairman Mahmoud Aloul said Donald Trump sought to implement his so-called deal of the century in the region to help “his friend” Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming Israeli elections and not to improve the wellbeing of Palestinians.
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  With the United States president’s much-postponed Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal still up in the air, Aloul – the likely successor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – said he had come under increased pressure to meet with officials from Washington. The peace plan’s principal ambassador in the region is Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and advisor.
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  Yet the Palestinian authorities have not had official contact with the Trump administration since the US president recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel back in 2017. “We have refused to meet with them around 10 times (in recent months),” the Fatah official told reporters in an unusual press encounter in Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian government.
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  “Until now we had no idea what was in the plan but we know what was not included: Jerusalem, the right of return for refugees and the creation of a Palestinian state. What reason do we have to speak to them?
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  “We completely reject the plan.”
  Aloul considers the diplomatic push from the US to be a veiled hand of support for Israel’s acting prime minister Netanyahu, who faces a third set of elections in less than one year on 2 March 2020 amid a political blockade. The Palestinian official said he was not optimistic about a change in leadership in Israel either. “I don’t think the alternative to Netanyahu is going to be better, but first of all, we’ll be pleased if he goes.”
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  The Fatah deputy leader is busy trying to plan elections in Palestine, where officials are trying to set up a vote for the first time since 2006. He said they were waiting for Israel’s permission to hold polling in East Jerusalem, a majority Palestinian community occupied by Israel since 1967.
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  Fatah officials in the West Bank have managed to come to an agreement with the Hamas Islamist movement to hold elections in the Gaza Strip, too, meaning occupied East Jerusalem is the last piece in the geopolitical puzzle to fall into place.
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