Ahead of US President Donald Trump’s meetings with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Cahol Lavan leader Benny Gantz scheduled in Washington for next Tuesday, Fatah movement expressed its concerns over the increasing likelihood that the US-led peace plan will be determined without consulting with the Palestinian leadership.
Fatah spokesman Jamal Nazzal said the peace plan, dubbed the “deal of the century” will fail to address Palestinian aspirations for independence and self-determination within a sovereign state of their own.
He reassured that no level of the Palestinian leadership has been part of any dialogue with the US administration with regard to President Trump’s peace plan, saying his movement will not support any ideas that exclude Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.
“If preliminary reports which indicated that the plan would give Israel sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and all the settlements, make Jerusalem the capital of Israel then our movement will strongly oppose it,” said Nazzal. “This comes as news speculated that the US plan allows for Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and settlements in Area C”.
Nazzal criticized what he called “the disrespectful attitude of the Trump administration” not only with regards to its failure to address the core issues, such as our right of the Palestinian people to independence and self-determination in a sovereign state.
He said the Trump administration was treating illegally occupied Palestinian land as if it were a “Trump owned property or real estate” that he could present to Netanyahu as an election gift, noting that Fatah views this as a total disregard to Palestinian rights, international law, agreements signed and American foreign policy itself.
“Fatah warns of repeating the mistakes of the past by removing internationally well-known permanent status negotiations issues such as Jerusalem, illegal Israeli settlements and the borders issue off the table to enhance a right wing agenda in the Israeli politics,” Nazzal added.
“It’s obvious to the world that the American side is pushing Israel to even more extreme attitudes than the most extreme right wing parties in Israel would have ever dared to dream of, especially when it comes to allowing Israel to apply sovereignty over the illegal settlements and the Jordan valley.”
He continued, “We see this as an active engagement by the US administration to deepen the conflict and make it harder to resolve rather than doing what’s necessary to resolve it by addressing the issues which kept it going for a hundred years now such as denying us Palestinians the right to independence and self- determination in our state with East Jerusalem as its Capital.”
Fatah called on the international Community especially the European Union to immediately recognize the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital within the borders of 1967. “We view such a step as the only useful and effective response to the attempts of the US administration to further destabilize our region by denying Palestinians rights which are deeply rooted in international law and widely recognized by the international community,” Nazzal concluded.
