Abbas to Egypt for talks with Sissi on Trump move
Palestinian Authority leader heads to Cairo for bilateral summit on Jerusalem, with reports Jordan’s king may join them
CAIRO, Egypt — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is to meet Egyptian leader Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo Monday over US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Egypt’s presidency said.
Welcomed by Israel, Trump’s move has drawn condemnation from within the Muslim world and from many Western countries, and Palestinian officials say Abbas will refuse to meet US Vice President Mike Pence when he travels to the region next week.
Sissi has invited Abbas “to a bilateral summit for consultations on Monday in Cairo to discuss developments related to the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” said Bassam Radi, a spokesman for the Egyptian presidency.
Official Palestinian news agency WAFA said Abbas and Sissi spoke by telephone on Sunday and “continued consultations about the latest developments after the US administration’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
It said that they agreed “to continue consulting to coordinate common positions.”
Palestine Liberation Organization official Wasel Abu Yousef told AFP he understood that Jordan’s King Abdullah II would also join Monday’s meeting, but there was no official confirmation of this.
In a Wednesday address from the White House, Trump defied worldwide warnings and insisted that after repeated failures to achieve peace a new approach was long overdue, describing his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the seat of Israel’s government as merely based on reality.
The move was hailed by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and by leaders across much of the Israeli political spectrum. Trump stressed that he was not specifying the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in the city, and called for no change in the status quo at the city’s holy sites.
Anger throughout the Muslim and Arab world has included protests in Egypt and Jordan, which also has a special role as the official custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
In Cairo, students and professors demonstrated at the prestigious Al-Azhar University, a university spokesman said, with pictures on social media showing several hundred protesters.
Dozens of students protested at two other Cairo universities.
Arab foreign ministers on Saturday called on the United States to rescind its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and for the international community to recognize a Palestinian state.
In a resolution after an emergency meeting in Cairo, Arab League member ministers said the United States had “withdrawn itself as a sponsor and broker” of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process with its controversial move.
The ministers met at the league’s headquarters in Cairo to formulate a response to the US decision.
Egypt’s top Muslim and Christian clerics have both cancelled scheduled meetings with Pence in protest at the Jerusalem decision.
Israel took control of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the international community.
The Palestinians want the eastern sector as the capital of their future state. Israel says that it is the undivided capital of Israel and that only under Israeli rule has freedom of worship been afforded all religious groups.
Much of the international community does not recognize the ancient city as Israel’s capital, insisting that the issue can only be resolved in negotiations.
