Abbas returns to Ramallah ‘with tail between his legs’

The PA president is extremely disappointed with world reaction to the Trump peace plan he slammed at the UN.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

According to a senior Palestinian official, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his delegation are extremely disappointed with the “cold shoulder” they received at the UN Security Council (UNSC) Tuesday, Israel Hayom reported on Thursday.

“There is a deep sense of disappointment among the members of the delegation that went with Abu Mazen to the UN,” said the source, referring to Abbas by his nom de guerre. “The feeling is that we come back with the tail between our legs. We were caught unprepared, and we underestimated U.S. pressure on Security Council members.”

When Abbas spoke at the world forum, he blasted President Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” proposal as “an Israeli-American preemptive plan in order to put an end to the question of Palestine.”

He showed a map of how Judea and Samaria would be divided between the Jews and Arabs, called it “Swiss cheese,” and demanded to know if any other country would accept such a state.

But a resolution proposed by rotating members Tunisia and Indonesia that strongly criticized the plan was never brought to a vote, even after attempts were made to tone down its language.

The Palestinian delegation couldn’t muster nine out of 15 members to back the resolution, which would have been vetoed in any case by the U.S.

The PA official said, “Once the draft was changed to the softened wording that did not include explicit condemnation of the Deal of the Century, there was no point in bringing up the motion for a resolution even if we had a majority. We are still shocked by the cold shoulder we received from Arab states, particularly the Gulf principalities, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.”

Some Palestinian officials see the UN failure as a wake-up call to Abbas, who is planning on visiting King Abdullah of Jordan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for consultations before returning home.

“It’s time to get free of the concept that Abu Mazen and his old guard are imprisoned by, that the international community and Arab countries will take care of Palestinian interests,” the official said.

The weak opposition to the American proposal and the resolution’s retraction “proves the argument that the time has come to switch tracks and reconsider the boycott of the Trump administration and the peace plan he formulated.”

Mahmoud AbbasUN