NEW YORK: The Trump administration’s long-awaited plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace is “dead upon arrival,” the Palestinian UN ambassador said on Tuesday.
Riyad Mansour told reporters that after President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Dec. 6 the US “lost the qualification to be the only party to supervise the political process.”
Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt, who have been drafting the administration’s plan, told the Arabic language Al-Quds newspaper last month that they will present it soon, with or without input from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Mansour said the US is “eager” for Palestinian engagement on the plan but “we are not going to engage.”
Mahmoud Abbas and many other Palestinian officials “have indicated we will not engage in something that was dead upon arrival before even we received it,” he said.
“It seems to me that people in Washington, D.C. — they still think that ‘we are the only game in town. It’s us or nothing,’” Mansour said. “We are not a player to accommodate their desires.”
Mansour said the Palestinians will insist on “a collective process” involving many countries to try to end the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as Abbas proposed in an address to the Security Council in February.
Within a collective approach, he said, the US can “play a role, but they cannot be the only one to supervise this process” following the “illegal and provocative” recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their independent state and say its status is a final issue yet to be decided, a view backed by the vast majority of UN member states.
Mansour also said the Palestinians do not want to go to negotiations where the US says Jerusalem, refugees, and a two-state solution “are off the table” and “settlements are maybe not on the table, maybe under the table.”
Mansour said possibilities for collective action include: An international conference, as China’s UN Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu called for Tuesday, possibly in Russia as has been suggested; invigorating the role of the Quartet of Mideast mediators — the US, UN, Russia and the EU — and possibly adding other delegations like China and Japan; the 15-member Security Council or its five permanent members leading the effort.
“We are open for all these things,” Mansour said.
He accused the Trump administration of being pro-Israel, saying US Ambassador Nikki Haley “is becoming more Israeli than the Israelis themselves.”
