At UN, Abbas slams Trump plan, accuses Israel of ‘apartheid’

The Palestinian chief rejected the U.S. peace plan in no uncertain terms, claiming that he seeks a global conference to address Palestinian grievances.

By World Israel News Staff and AP

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vehemently rejected the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan in a speech to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday.

He called for an international conference, disparaging the the U.S. proposal as “an Israeli-American pre-emptive plan in order to put an end to the question of Palestine.”

He also maintained that the plan violates numerous U.N. resolutions, annuls Palestinian rights “to self-determination, freedom and independence in our own state,” and should not be considered a basis for negotiations.

Under the Trump plan, the Palestinians would receive an independent state, around $50 billion in foreign aid, and the creation of over one million jobs.

Abbas told the Security Council on Tuesday, “This plan violates international legitimacy. … It annuls the legitimacy of Palestinian rights, our right to self-determination, freedom and independence of our own state.”

The Palestinian leader proceeded to display a series of maps, which he claimed demonstrated Israel’s theft of Arab land, referringto the territory earmarked under the Trump plan for a Palestinian state as “Swiss cheese.”

Abbas also trotted out the familiar Palestinian tropes of “apartheid” and “occupation,” rhetorical devices used in venues like the UN to paint Israel as the oppressor and create a false equivalency between Israel’s representative democracy and the racially segregated South African regime that fell in 1994.

The Palestinians seek all of Judea and Samaria and Israel’s capital, Jerusalem, for an independent state and the removal of hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis from these areas.

It had been expected that the 15-member Security Council would vote on a resolution co-sponsored by Tunisia and Indonesia and backed by the Palestinians opposing the U.S. plan.

But diplomats said many of its initial provisions were not acceptable to European members of the council, who support a two-state solution based on pre-1967 borders, and other council members. And it was unclear whether the resolution would receive the minimum nine “yes” votes for approval.