Deal of century meant to protect Trump from impeachment: Palestinian PM

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh says US President Donald Trump’s so-called deal of the century on the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict aims to protect him from impeachment and the Israeli premier from imprisonment.

News ID: 448679

Date: 28 January 2020 - 09:47

RNA - Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh says US President Donald Trump’s so-called deal of the century on the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict aims to protect him from impeachment and the Israeli premier from imprisonment.

“This plan does not form the basis for resolving the conflict, and is presented by a party that has lost its integrity and credibility. It is a plan to protect Trump from impeachment and [Benjamin] Netanyahu from prison. It is not a Middle East peace plan,” Shtayyeh told a weekly cabinet session in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday.

“This plan gives Israel sovereignty over Palestinian territory,” he said.

The high-ranking Palestinian official urged international community to boycott the so-called deal of the century, describing it as biased in favor of the Israeli regime.

“We call on the international community to not be partners in this, because it contravenes international law. The rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale,” Shtayyeh said.

He noted that President Mahmoud Abbas would call a meeting of the Palestinian leadership to discuss the best ways to respond to the US-crafted deal.

‘Netanyahu, Gantz reception at White House shows US plan is racist’

Meanwhile, the secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) political party, Mustafa Barghouti, said Trump’s reception of Netanyahu and his main political rival Benny Gantz at the White House on January 28 to unveil “the deal of the century” is proof that the plan is an Israeli “racist” project with an American cover.

“This contradicts the decisions of the UN Security Council and even the positions of previous US administrations. It seems that the US president is trying to persuade Netanyahu and Gantz to form a coalition cabinet in order to pass the deal to liquidate the national rights of Palestinians,” Barghouti said in a statement released on Monday.

“What we are witness to indicates that the negotiation process under US auspices has ended, and talks on the rights and future of the Palestinian nations have finished off,” he highlighted.

Barghouthi stressed that “the Palestinian people will not allow the conspiracy against their national rights to proceed. Palestinian rights constitute a decisive element in the equation. It is the duty of all peoples and nations to stand by it and refuse to deal with normalization projects at the expense of the Palestinians.”

Even though the full plan has not been released, Israeli media outlets have described it as a deal that meets nearly all of the Tel Aviv regime’s demands in exchange for the possibility of maybe, someday recognizing a Palestinian state.

"Peace has nothing to do with it," said Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon said in a tweet last week.

According to the English-language online newspaper Times of Israel, the deal drastically undermines Palestinian hopes for restoring land seized by Israeli settlements and allows Israel to expand its territory even further.

The US plan on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has already been unanimously rejected by all Palestinian factions.

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