Palestinian Foreign Minister says US has no peace plan but ‘conditions for surrender’

The United States is crafting a surrender document, not a peace plan, and the Palestinians will not accept it regardless of how much money is offered, Palestine’s foreign minister said addressing a United Nations meeting.

Riyad al-Maliki was on Thursday expressing the Palestinian stance on the proposed plan by the Trump administration to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“This is not a peace plan but rather conditions for surrender,” al-Maliki said as the US’s Middle East peace negotiator, Jason Greenblatt, listened on. “And there is no amount of money that can make it acceptable.”

“Some ask us, ‘what if they surprise you’; we tell them we would have been more hopeful had they not been deaf to our appeals, blind to Israeli violations and mute, at best, on the fundamentals of peace, when not actively undermining them,” he added.

Palestinian officials have ruled out a role for the US in peace talks after the Trump administration unilaterally recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, upending long-established understandings that underpin negotiations to end the conflict and establish a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel.

“When the US, prior to announcing its plan, recognises Jerusalem as the so-called ‘capital of Israel’ and claims they are entitled to take such a sovereign decision that is in blatant violation of international law and UN Security Council resolutions and pretend it has no implications on peace, it is not possible to have faith in such efforts,” Maliki said.

Two-state solution
Last week, Kushner revealed new contours of the upcoming US peace plan, indicating that it will pull back from long-standing mentions of a two-state solution with the Palestinians and accept Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Greenblatt told the UNSC “the vision for peace that we will soon put forward will be realistic and implementable” and “lay out the core issues of the conflict in enough detail that everyone will be able to imagine what peace could look like”.

Al-Maliki, however, said Greenblatt’s speech clearly marked his pro-Israel bias.

“It’s very clear that his thinking, his mind, is well set to be exclusively anti-Palestinian, anti-peace and anti-logic, and anti-international law,” he said.

The Palestinian foreign minister pointed out there are over 600,000 Israeli settlers currently living in the occupied West Bank, insisting Israel is intent on annexing the areas where they live, but maintained the Palestinian Authority is committed to brokering a two-state solution through dialogue.

“Despite this ongoing injustice, we remain committed to peace and the rule of international law. Why? Because it is the only way forward.”