Abbas Says US No Longer ‘Honest’ Mideast Broker
by JNS.org
JNS.org – Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday that he will no longer work with the US on peace efforts due to President Donald Trump’s recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The US is “no longer an honest mediator in the peace process” and the Palestinians “will no longer accept any plan from the United States because of this partisan spirit,” Abbas said in a meeting with French President Emanuel Macron, The Associated Press reported.
Abbas’s comments came after a contentious vote at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday that saw 128 countries vote for a resolution condemning Trump’s Jerusalem decision. Though it passed, the measure drew less support than the Palestinians had expected, with 35 countries abstaining and nine voting against the resolution.
Ahead of the vote, Trump had threatened that the US would consider cutting foreign aid to countries supporting the resolution. Abbas countered that the Palestinians “call upon countries that did not recognize Palestine yet to do so to preserve the two-state solution before it’s too late.”
Macron, whose government opposed Trump’s Jerusalem recognition move, said Friday that “the American mistake was to want to unilaterally manage from afar a situation whose solution is in the hands of the Israelis and Palestinians.”