BICOM

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas rejected the US’s role as broker in any future Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in a speech last night to the Palestinian Central Council meeting in Ramallah.

Abbas told senior Palestinian delegates that “any future negotiations will take place only within the context of the international community, by an international committee created in the framework of an international conference. Allow me to be clear: We will not accept America leadership of a political process involving negotiations”.

Abbas’s speech marked the start of a two-day meeting of the Palestinian Central Council, an advisory body that provides the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) Executive Committee, the highest-ranking Palestinian executive body, with recommendations relating to policy. It usually meets when the legislative body of the PLO, the Palestinian National Council, is unable to convene.

Abbas’s address had been seen as an opportunity to chart a Palestinian course forward in the light of Trump’s announcement last month on Jerusalem and the US threat to withhold Palestinian funding.

Abbas lamented: “I saw a tweet on Twitter. ‘We won’t give the Palestinians money because they refuse to negotiate.’ Yihareb beitak [May your house be destroyed]. When did we refuse? Where did you propose that to me? On the phone? On television?”

Abbas said that the 1993 Oslo Accords were a dead letter, but stopped short of announcing that he was invalidating them. “The central committee is responsible for revisiting the agreements that were signed by the PLO and the Israeli government. It needs to re-examine the agreements”.

Abbas then turned to the UK, saying that “we continue to demand an apology from the British for the Balfour Declaration, and we will continue to demand their recognition of a Palestinian state”.

He then quoted an Egyptian philosopher who commented on the Balfour Declaration: “Israel is a colonialist project that has no connection to the Jews”.

Writing in the Times of Israel, Avi Issacharoff said Abbas’s speech seemed like “a valedictory address,” whereby the Palestinian leader “promised that the Palestinians would not give up their rights” and would “say ‘No’ to anyone, if it is about our destiny, our cause, our country and our people… which left many Palestinians asking themselves a simple question — one that many people in Israel also ask their leaders: “So what is ‘yes?’”