U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to host Israeli leaders in Washington to reveal details of his long-delayed Middle East peace plan, Palestinians warned on Friday that no deal could work without them on board.
Trump invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rival centrist former general Benny Gantz to the White House next week, saying he would unveil the plan before his Tuesday meeting with Netanyahu.
But Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said there had been no communication with the Trump administration, and that no peace deal could be implemented without “the approval of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian leadership”.
“This is the only way if they are serious, if they are looking for stability in the whole region,” Rudeinah said.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014 and Palestinians have called Trump’s proposal dead in the water, even before its publication, citing what they see as his pro-Israel policies.
The Palestinians have boycotted political dealings with the Trump administration since it reversed decades of U.S. policy on the conflict, break the international consensus.
It has refused to endorse the two-state solution – the longtime international peace formula that predicts a Palestinian state established in territory that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
The Trump administration also recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved its embassy there, and announced that Washington no longer views Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land as “inconsistent with international law”.
Palestinians and most of the international community see the settlements as illegal under the 1949 Geneva Conventions that bar populating land captured in war. Israel disputes this, mentioning historical, biblical and political connections to the land, as well as security needs.
Palestinians obtained limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank under mid-1990s interim peace accords. They now seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state comprising the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel withdrew from tiny Gaza in 2005.
Trump, speaking to reporters on his flight home from the World Economic Forum in Davos, acknowledged Palestinians might react negatively to his plan at first but that “it’s actually very positive for them”.
“It’s a great plan. It’s a plan that really would work.”
Netanyahu immediately accepted Trump’s invite.
“I think the president is seeking to give Israel the peace and security that it deserves,” Netanyahu said on Thursday,
Gantz’s office did not immediately confirm whether he accepted Trump’s invitation.
