Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh has called for an international alliance against the much-vaunted peace plan of US President Donald Trump, which the American leader said will end the decades-long conflict.
The newly-appointed premier “stressed the need to create an international alliance to face” the Trump administration and reject the deal, which Palestinians predict will not include any prospect of a sovereign Palestinian state, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
He said that there was no alternative to the two-state solution, a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state, with the Palestinian entity based on the 1967 borders with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital.
The majority of the international community believes that the status of Jerusalem and a Palestinian state should be discussed through direct negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Mr Trump has cut more than $500 million in Palestinian aid in a bid to force Palestinian leaders to negotiate. Palestinian leaders call it an attempt to blackmail them into accepting a plan aimed at wiping out their cause.
Little has been released about the contents of the plan that Trump officials have been working on for more than two years. Mr Trump’s team includes his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt and ambassador to Israel and former bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman.
But Palestinian officials believe that the plan will be an attempt to deal a blow to any hope of statehood, and likely to be one-sided in favour of Israel and its hard-right government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
His comments came in a meeting with Norway’s special envoy for the Middle East peace process Tor Wennesland in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
They were discussing a donors’ conference scheduled for the Palestinians at the end of May in Brussels.
Mr Shtayyeh also reiterated the Palestinian position that it is reviewing the status quo with Israel, that is its legal, economic and security relationship.
