Arab League rejects Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ at Cairo summit with Abbas

1 Feb, 2020 14:43 / Updated 13 hours ago

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Arab League foreign ministers meet in Cairo, Egypt, February 1, 2020 © Reuters / Mohamed Abd El Ghany 

The Arab League has shot down US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan, saying it would not lead to a just peace between Israel and Palestine. The deal has already been rejected by the Palestinian side.

League members met in Cairo on Saturday to discuss the deal, touted by Trump as the “deal of the century,” and a realistic roadmap to peace between Israel and Palestine. Speaking at the meeting, Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas announced he would cut all ties with the US and Israel over the plan, and would not go down in history as the person who “sold out Jerusalem.”

Khaled Elgindy@elgindy_

Many feared (or hoped) the Arab states would abandon the Palestinians and embrace the Trump plan. It would appear that did not happen.

Arab FMs reject Trump's Israeli-Palestinian plan https://www.dw.com/en/arab-league-rejects-trumps-israeli-palestinian-peace-plan/a-52225651 …

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After “studying the American position carefully,” the Arab League sided with Abbas and issued a unanimous rejection of the plan on Saturday. In a joint communique, officials from the 22 member states said the deal would not lead to a just peace between both sides, and the league will not cooperate with the US to implement it.

Under the terms of the deal, Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank would be legitimized, and the Jewish state would annex vast swathes of fertile Palestinian land. While the plan provides for a sovereign Palestinian state, its capital would be located outside East Jerusalem, and its security and border policy would be decided by Israel.

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Furthermore, the plan recognizes the entirety of Jerusalem, including the holy sites on Temple Mount, as Israeli property. Jerusalem is claimed as a capital city by both Israel and Palestine, and by ceding the city to Israel, the Trump administration likely anticipated its rejection by Abbas and the Arabs.

The emergency meeting was called in order to define a unified Arab world position in response to the ‘deal of the century,’ the League’s deputy chair, Hossam Zaki, told RT Arabic.

“This position will be obligatory for every [member state],” Zaki stressed.

Zaki believes that the terms of the American proposal are absolutely unfair to Palestinians.

Roughly one third of the current [Palestinian] territory is supposed to go to Israel. In return Israel may give the Palestinians some 14 percent of desert land – in exchange for the fertile lands and water sources in the West Bank. That’s unfair to the Palestinian side.