Donald Trump prompts Mahmoud Abbas to cut Israeli security ties

The Palestinian Authority has cut all ties with the US and Israel, including those relating to security on the West Bank.

Israeli border police take positions during clashes with Palestinian demonstrators in Ramallah on Saturday. Picture: AP

The Palestinian Authority has cut all ties with the US and Israel, including those relating to security, after rejecting a Middle East peace plan presented by US President Donald Trump.

The blueprint, endorsed by ­Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calls for the creation of a demilitarised Palestinian state that excludes Jewish settlements built in occupied territory and is under near-total Israeli security control.

“We’ve informed the Israeli side … that there will be no relations at all with them and the United States, including security ties,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (AEDT) told the one-day emergency meeting on Sunday, called to discuss the US plan.

There was no immediate reaction from the Israeli government, but Mr Netanyahu’s chief rival in next month’s general election, former military chief Benny Gantz, criticised the Palestinian response, saying Mr Abbas “doesn’t miss an opportunity for refusal”.

“The time has come to begin working for the future generations and toward peace, instead of remaining stuck in the past and preventing a future of hope in this region,” Mr Gantz said.

Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s security forces have long co-operated in policing areas of the occupied West Bank that are under Palestinian control. The PA also has intelligence co-operation agreements with the CIA, which continued even after the Palestinians began boycotting the Trump administration’s peace efforts in 2017.

Mr Abbas also said he had refused to discuss the plan with Mr Trump by phone, or to receive even a copy of it to study.

“Trump asked that I speak to him by phone but I said ‘no’, and that he wants to send me a letter … but I refused it,” he said.

Mr Abbas said he did not want Mr Trump to be able to say that he, Abbas, had been consulted.

He reiterated his “complete” rejection of the Trump plan, presented on Tuesday. “I will not have it recorded in my history that I sold Jerusalem,” he said.

An Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday, in which officials said Mr Netanyahu would seek approval to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, has been scrapped.

After Mr Trump unveiled his peace plan on Tuesday, questions surfaced on whether Israel would immediately seek to annex parts of the West Bank.

Later, unnamed Israeli officials said Mr Netanyahu would convene a cabinet meeting on Sunday to discuss that issue and seek approval to annex settlements and territory that would become part of Israel under the plan.

But on Saturday an official at his office said there would be no Sunday meeting.

On Friday, Britain cautioned Israel against quickly seizing parts of the West Bank. “Any such unilateral moves would be damaging to renewed efforts to restart peace negotiations, and contrary to international law,” the foreign office said. “Any changes to the status quo cannot be taken forward without an agreement negotiated by the parties themselves.”

Mr Trump’s proposal gives the Jewish state a US green light to annex key parts of the West Bank, including in the strategic Jordan Valley. The Arab League rejected the Trump plan, saying it did not meet the “minimum rights” of the Palestinians.

The plan, seen as overwhelmingly supportive of Israeli goals, has been firmly rejected by the Palestinians and triggered protests in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including isolated clashes with Israeli forces.

The Israeli army said on Saturday that Palestinians in Gaza fired an unspecified “projectile” into Israel at night, the latest in a series of rocket and mortar fire since Wednesday, a day after Mr Trump unveiled his plan. There were no reported injuries. Israeli warplanes hit Gaza’s Islamist rulers, Hamas, on Saturday morning after several rounds of cross-border fire by Palestinian militants on Friday.

“Among the targets were weapon storage facilities and an underground infrastructure used by the Hamas terror organisation,” the army said.

After Mr Trump unveiled his long-awaited plan alongside Mr Netanyahu in Washington on Tuesday, his ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, said the Jewish state “does not have to wait at all” to begin its implementation.

But Jared Kushner — Mr Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, who spearheaded the Middle East initiative — said Washington did not want any moves made before Israel’s March 2 election.

Reuters, AFP