BICOM

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas told the Palestinian Central Council (PCC) that he will block the US plan for talks with Israel.

Abbas said Palestinians were facing the “most dangerous stage” in their history, highlighting a series of controversial measures taken by the Trump administration. Abbas compared the Trump plan for Israeli-Palestinian talks to the 1917 Balfour Declaration. He said, “If the Balfour Declaration passed, this deal will not pass”.

Abbas has boycotted the Trump administration since it decided to relocated its embassy to Jerusalem and declare the city as Israel’s capital. “You already presented all of the deal of the era. What remains? Jerusalem, you swallowed it and moved your embassy to it. Refugees and the right of refugees, you put an end to that,” Abbas said.

President Abbas also renewed his support for paying salaries to families of Palestinians killed or imprisoned by Israel. “The salaries of our martyrs and prisoners are a red line,” Abbas said. The PA’s Prisoners and Liberated Prisoners law enables compensation to the family of a prisoner, defined as “anyone in the occupation’s prisons for participating in the struggle against the occupation”. Israel says the payments to families of those who have carried out violent attacks on Israelis encourage and reward terrorism.

Abbas said that Hamas’s refusal to give up full control of Gaza means “there will be no [independent] state in the Gaza Strip and no state without the Gaza Strip. I am telling the Gaza leadership that if they accept a state in Gaza they are standing by our enemies who want to dismantle us”.

Mahmoud Aloul, deputy chairman of Fatah, said the PCC meeting “aims to establish mechanisms for the implementation of the decisions of previous sessions of the national and central councils”. The PCC has 130 members and is the second highest Palestinian decision making body after the Palestinian National Council (PNC).