Palestinian official: ‘Real estate men’ like Trump won’t solve conflict
Top negotiator Saeb Erekat dismisses US administration’s soon-to-be-unveiled peace plan, insists PA will continue to pay prisoners’ salaries
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A senior Palestinian official lashed out at US President Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying “real estate men” can’t resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The remarks by Saeb Erekat, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s longtime top peace negotiator, came as the White House is expected to unveil a long-awaited peace plan which the Palestinians have already dismissed as pointless.
Erekat said the White House “should be run by great men, not real estate men,” and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “won’t be solved by the tools of real estate men.”
He also said the Palestinian Authority will continue its payments to the families of jailed or dead Palestinian terrorists, after Israel passed a law this week withholding millions in taxes it collects for the Palestinians until the PA stops allocating funds for that purpose.
The Israeli move deepened a budget crunch for the Palestinians, already hit by US aid cuts.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas cut off all contact with Washington over Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December. As a result, the Palestinians have been excluded from Washington’s efforts to form the peace proposal.
Trump has billed his upcoming peace plan as “the deal of the century.” His senior adviser Jared Kushner and his Middle East peace envoy Jason Greenblatt toured the region and held meetings with state leaders in June. The two visited Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt to discuss the much-anticipated peace plan. They did not meet with representatives from the Palestinian Authority.
Ahead of their arrival last month, PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh was quoted by Hebrew media as saying the regional talks “whose purpose is to bring a meaningless plan, won’t achieve anything.”
During the visit, Kushner gave a rare interview to the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds in which he urged Palestinians not to let their “scared” leadership reject the Trump administration peace plan, and voiced doubt about whether Abbas truly wanted an accord.
At the time Erekat responded to Kushner’s interview by saying in a statement that the peace plan is an attempt to consolidate “Israel’s colonial control over Palestinian land and lives while telling the Palestinian people that money will compensate for our inalienable rights.
“Plain and simple: Palestine and Palestinian rights are not for sale,” he said.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.