Abbas calls to step up ‘popular resistance’ against Israel 

Palestinians must “keep the ground aflame with popular resistance” against Israel, Abbas stated.

By: World Israel News Staff

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that “popular resistance” should be the only means of struggle towards independence and statehood.

“Popular resistance” usually indicates the use of rocks and firebombs against Israelis rather than more advanced weapons, such as guns.

Speaking during the closing session of the 29th meeting of the Palestinian Central Council (PCC) held on Friday in Ramallah, Abbas said that the Palestinians “should not underestimate it [popular resistance]” and must “keep the ground aflame with popular resistance” against Israel.

He called for further visits to the illegally built Beduin village of Khan al-Ahmar, east of Jerusalem, which is facing a court-ordered demolition by Israel.

“Everyone, officials and the public, should be going to Khan al-Ahmar. Our goal now must be to stay there and not allow them [the Israelis] to set up their project, because we know that they will tear apart the West Bank if they take over that area. This is a critical issue that we must keep in mind,” he stated, according to the official Palestinian WAFA news agency.

The location of the illegal structures is hazardous due to its proximity to a major highway. Khan al Ahmar is adjacent and overlooking the highway that connects Jerusalem to the south of Israel in a strategic area that bisects the country.

The residents, the Jahalin Bedouin, are an offshoot of a larger tribe based in southern Israel in the Arad region. After a blood feud broke out within the tribe, some of the families were forced out and migrated north through the Judean desert, arriving and settling in their present location after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Their battle for the land is part of a PA and European Union-orchestrated program of creating strategically located outposts that undermine the basis of the Oslo Accords.

By creating “placeholder” encampments in strategic points throughout Area C of Judea and Samaria, the PA has circumvented the process of negotiation.

The PCC, the second-highest authority after the Palestinian National Council (PNC), affirmed on Friday its strong rejection of President Donald Trump’s yet unveiled “Deal of the Century” peace plan “in any shape or form,” stressing that it will fight it “with all available means.”

It also announced that it considered the Trump administration a “partner to the Israeli occupation government and part of the problem rather than the solution.”

The PCC stressed “the continuation of the severing of political relations with the US administration until it retracts its illegal decisions on Jerusalem, refugees and settlements.”

The Palestinians have frozen all ties with Washington since President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The PCC approved the recommendations submitted by the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to implement the decisions of the National Council and to submit a “comprehensive plan with specific timetables for redefining political, economic and security relations with the Israeli Occupying Power.”

The plan includes the suspension of recognition of the State of Israel until it recognizes the “State of Palestine on the June 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem”; the cessation of security coordination with Israel; cessation of the Paris Protocols, which dictate the economic relations with Israel, and identifying the pillars and steps to start the process of transition from the current phase of “authority” to the independence of the sovereign state of Palestine.