Jerusalem: Palestinian leader Abbas spurns US peace plan
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
has said he will not accept any US plan for peace with Israel, after it
recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital. His
comments came after a UN General Assembly vote effectively repudiated Washington's
controversial declaration.
Washington has for the past few
months been drafting a new peace plan, though it has not divulged any details. Meanwhile,
two Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli troops amid fresh protests
over Jerusalem's status. The men, both in their 20s, were shot dead in the east
of the Gaza Strip, the territory's health ministry said. Israel said it was
investigating.
There have been violent
confrontations on the border between Israel and Gaza, as well as across the
occupied West Bank, for the past three Fridays. Palestinians clashed with troops in
places including Bethlehem as the city, the traditional birthplace of Jesus,
prepared for Christmas.
What
did Mahmoud Abbas say?
The Palestinian leader reiterated
that he no longer accepted the US as a mediator in the peace process with
Israel. He also rebuffed a new US framework for peace being developed by
President Trump's Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner, before it has been
launched.
"The United States has proven to
be a dishonest mediator in the peace process and we will no longer accept any
plan from the United States," Mr Abbas told a news conference in Paris. While
the details of the US plan are not known, it has been devised for months and
there has been an expectation it will be publicly launched in early 2018. The
last round of US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians
collapsed amid acrimony in April 2014.
Why
has this happened now?
Mr Abbas has been emboldened by the
outcome of the vote at the UN, which rejected any changes to the status of
Jerusalem. Thursday's
vote came three days after the US used its power of veto to block a similar resolution at
the world body's smaller, but more powerful, Security Council.
The US had warned countries not to
support the latest resolution, threatening to cut off financial aid anyone who
backed it. However the resolution still passed with a decisive majority, as
most nations, including Washington's allies, voted in its favour.
Why is
the US at loggerheads with the international community?
Washington perceives the diplomatic
opposition to its position on Jerusalem as an attack on its own sovereignty.
It
says it has the right to decide its own policies, including where it places its
embassies. Alongside recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital,
Donald Trump ordered the US embassy to be relocated there from Tel Aviv,
breaking rank with the rest of the global community which maintain their
embassies in the coastal city.
While
the US has been widely criticised for reversing decades of neutrality on the
issue of Jerusalem, Washington says it is fulfilling an election pledge by Mr
Trump to implement the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which was passed by Congress
in 1995 but had been continuously postponed. President Trump's declaration has
been condemned across Arab and predominantly Muslim countries, and hailed in
Israel.
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