Palestinian Authority Supports Trump’s Call for Israeli Settlements ‘Pullback’, Wary of ‘One State’ Idea

February 16, 2017 Articles, Features, News
Trump speaking at a press conference in the White House, (Photo: Video grab, BBC, file)

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas fully supports Donald Trump’s call on Israel to “pull back” on settlement expansion, but is yet to comment on a trending idea that a peace deal might not necessarily include an independent Palestinian state.

The Palestinian presidency “demands that [Israelis] agree to [Trump’s call] and that of the international community, to halt all settlement activities including in occupied East Jerusalem,” a written statement issued by Abbas’ office said.

Trump on Wednesday asked the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to temporarily hold off on building new Jewish settlements on land claimed by Palestinians for their future state.

“I’d like to see you pull back on settlements for a little bit,” Trump said, instead promising to strike a deal that would bring an end to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “I’m looking at two-state and one-state… I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one.”

“The United States will encourage a peace and really a great peace deal” between Israel and the Palestinians, but they have to negotiate it themselves, Trump said at a joint briefing with Netanyahu in Washington, DC.

Trump’s statement that the United States would no longer insist on an independent Palestinian state as part of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians is a shift from the long-standing US policy which envisages a two-state solution. Before Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump, a White House official also noted that the US is serious about the Middle East peace process but is not insistent on a two-state solution.

While an anathema to some Palestinians, the Palestine Liberation Organization(PLO) Secretary-General, said that one state solution could be possible if that state extends equal democratic rights for all.

“Contrary to Netanyahu’s plan of one state and two systems, apartheid, the only alternative to two sovereign and democratic states on the 1967 border is one single secular and democratic state with equal rights for everyone, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, on all of historic Palestine,” Saeb Erekat said Wednesday during a meeting with the speaker of the UK House of Commons, John Bercow, in Ramallah.

“As we have constantly stated, the two-state solution is a Palestinian adoption of an international formula,” Erekat, the PLO’s former lead peace negotiator, continued. “In fact, it represents a painful and historic Palestinian compromise of recognizing Israel over 78% of historic Palestine. Today, almost six million Palestinians live under Israeli control in all of historic Palestine, while almost six million Palestinians live in exile.”

Erekat’s comments contradict Palestine’s official position which still imagines the establishment of an independent state within 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, but rampant Israeli settlement expansion has virtually rendered this dream unviable.

Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem following the 1967 Six Day War has been one of the major stumbling blocks in the peace negotiations. The last peace effort to reconcile the conflicting sides brokered by then Secretary of State John Kerry collapsed in April 2014.

The issue of settlements has been widely publicized in recent months after the Obama’s administration abstained from voting on what Tel Aviv called an “anti-Israel” UN Security Council settlement resolution.

Trump and his team voiced concern over the adoption of the UNSC document and sent out messages which indicated that the new administration would not oppose Israeli settlement expansion once in office.

While the official White House position has changed, Israel, prior to Netanyahu’s visit to the US, went on to approve some 6,000 new settlement homes since Trump’s inauguration. The Israeli parliament has also approved the legalization of nearly 4,000 settler homes in Area C of the West Bank as it passed a controversial retroactive bill.

It is yet to be seen if Ramallah changes its official position on the two-state solution. So far, some senior Palestinian figures and the UN Secretary General have reacted angrily to Donald Trump’s assertions that a sovereign Palestinian state is no longer an essential part of a peace settlement in the Middle East.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior PLO politician, said Trump was pandering to Zionist nationalists with his about-turn of US support for the two-state solution, originally and publicly proclaimed by Bill Clinton.

“If the Trump administration rejects this policy it would be destroying the chances for peace and undermining American interests, standing and credibility abroad,” she said in a statement. “Accommodating the most extreme and irresponsible elements in Israel and in the White House is no way to make responsible foreign policy.”

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also reaffirmed his commitment to giving Palestinians statehood as a result of any peace talks.

“There is no alternative solution for the situation between the Palestinians and Israelis, other than the solution of establishing two states, and we should do all that can be done to maintain this,” he said during a visit to Cairo.

(RT, PC, Social Media)

 

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1 Comment

  1. There is a big logic idea to establish a palestinean state based out from a very historic existence of the Sea people of Egypt ,mixed with Edom and forming the Amelek people in what is called today the region of Neguev. the bible is a base of the history and we see the possibility of a land with little population in part of Sinai.I would say make Palestine from Gaza till Taba on the Red Sea getting the border to the brooke wadi Al-Arish in Sinai as being the extreme limit of Canaan and Third Palestine of the organized Byzantine plan. Israel also have to support financially to build the state and to give also an indenpendence not only Gaza strip but go down till mountain Mahgara border line.

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