PLO: Trump’s deal aims to destroy Palestinian Authority

PLO Secretary Saeb Erekat said yesterday that US President Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ aimed to destroy the Palestinian Authority (PA) by creating an alternative for it.

“PA President Mahmoud Abbas rejected it,” he explained, adding that the “resilience” of the PA resulted in stopping the annexation plans, “but the UAE-Israel deal, which was engineered by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, represented a powerful strike to our efforts.”

“The PLO signed deals with Israel only for five years. The only mistake that we made was not to make clear where and what to do after the end of the five years if Israel did not commit to the deals.”

Erekat claimed that the UAE-Israel normalisation deal “undermined” the PLO’s efforts to achieve peace that would end the Israeli occupation of the lands occupied in 1967, create a Palestinian state and solve the refugee issue.

He went on to condemn the silence of the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Council of the Gulf States regarding the deal.

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Ending his speech, he said that the PA has been in contact with all the Arab states in order to “prevent” any country from following in the UAE’s steps.

On 13 August, US President Donald Trump announced a peace deal between the UAE and Israel brokered by Washington.

Abu Dhabi said the deal was an effort to stave off Tel Aviv’s planned annexation of the occupied West Bank, however, opponents believe normalisation efforts have been in the offing for many years as Israeli officials have made official visits to the UAE and attended conferences in the country which had no diplomatic or other ties with the occupation state.

Netanyahu repeated on 17 August that annexation is not off the table, but has simply been delayed.