Arabic daily: Liberman revealed details of Trump plan to Palestinians

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman revealed details of the Trump administration’s carefully guarded peace plan to the Palestinians, the London-based Al Hayat newspaper claims.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman revealed details of the Trump administration’s carefully guarded peace plan to the Palestinians just ahead of his resignation in mid-November, Palestinian officials say, according to the London-based Al Hayat newspaper on Wednesday.

The report says the Trump plan calls for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, and sovereignty for the population in small areas of the West Bank, as well as generous economic incentives.

Liberman met a Palestinian delegation two weeks before he resigned and said the U.S. plan, which President Donald Trump has dubbed the ‘deal of the century,’ would grant sovereignty to the Palestinian population, but not the land, though the report did not go into further detail about how that would work in practice.

The Al-Hayat report said that sovereignty would be limited to Area A, roughly 13 percent of Judea and Samaria, parts of Area B (about 18 percent of Judea and Samaria) and a small part of Area C, which is about 60 percent of Judea and Samaria, Palestinian officials told the paper.

Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria would remain, and Israel would maintain control of security, water and external borders. Israel would also retain control of the Jordan Valley.

Al-Hayat also reports that according to the Palestinian officials Israel would keep control of what it called “occupied East Jerusalem.”

The plan also provides for large influxes of money from donor nations to build up the Palestinian state’s infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, including a port, airport and so forth.

The London-based Arabic daily also reported that President Mahmoud Abbas blasted the plan, saying the Palestinians would fight it. “This is a conspiracy, a conspiracy that they are going to be waging from afar,” Abbas said in an improvised speech on Monday when the rumored details of the plan came to light.

“They say wait for the deal, what are we waiting for? Everything is on the table, anothing is left hidden, and what they offer is rejected, rejected, rejected, and we will fight to prevent it, because we will not sell our sanctity,” Abbas said

U.S. sanctions against the Palestinians to pressure them to accept the deal wouldn’t work, Abbas said, according to Al-Hayat.

Avigdor LibermanDonald Trump