Mahmud Abbas says Palestine ‘cutting all ties with US, Israel’
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas has announced he was cutting all ties with the Israel and the US in the wake of Donald Trump’s peace plan.
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas on Saturday announced a cut in all ties with Israel and the United States, including security co-operation.
Abbas said the peace plan unveiled by US President Donald Trump was in “violation of the (autonomy) accords” launched in Oslo in 1993 by Israel and the Palestinians.
Israel will have to “bear responsibility as an occupying power” for the Palestinian territories, he told an emergency Arab League meeting in Cairo.
The US plan would grant the Palestinians limited self-rule in parts of the occupied West Bank, while allowing Israel to annex all its settlements there and keep nearly all of east Jerusalem.
The summit of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo was requested by the Palestinians, who responded angrily to the American proposal.
Mr Abbas said that he told Israel and the US that “there will be no relations with them, including the security ties” following the deal that Palestinians say heavily favours Israel.
There was no immediate comment from US or Israeli officials.
The Palestinian leader said that he’d refused to take Mr Trump’s phone calls and messages “because I know that he would use that to say he consulted us.”
“I will never accept this solution,” Abbas said. “I will not have it recorded in my history that I have sold Jerusalem.”
He said the Palestinians remain committed to ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a state with its capital in east Jerusalem.