PRESIDENT Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday met with a US delegation representing President Trump, headed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner at his Ramallah headquarters, and reiterated his appreciation of Trump’s efforts to ‘revive peace’ between the Palestinians and Israel.
‘We highly appreciate President Trump’s efforts to strike a historical peace deal, a statement he repeated more than one time during our meetings in Washington, Riyadh and Bethlehem,’ Abbas said at the start of his meeting with the Kushner.
‘We know that this delegation is working for peace, and we are working with it to achieve what President Trump has called a peace deal. We know that things are difficult and complicated, but there is nothing impossible with good efforts,’ he said.
Kushner said ‘Trump dispatched us from Washington to talk today about a topic that is very important to him which is peaceful relations between the countries in the whole region.’ This aim is not the same as establishing a Palestinian state!
In fact as Kushner implied he was not just representing Trump, but also Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states who view Iran as their enemy in the region and want to see a one-state solution to the Palestinian question. Their aim is not a state of Palestine replacing Israel, but Israel, a creation of Balfour and the imperialist powers, swallowing up Palestine, perhaps leaving a section of the Gaza Strip for Palestinian irreconcilables.
In fact, Kushner’s delegation met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, before it travelled on to Ramallah. Abbas did reiterate the PLO’s requirements for resuming the long-stalled peace process ‘emphasising the goal of the two-state solution and cessation of Israeli settlement construction.’
Trump and Kushner evade this by saying that they will agree to anything that both sides agree to. In fact, Netanyahu and the Zionists are creating new settlements as fast as they can. Israel has begun the construction work on three new settlements comprising of 11,500 units in the illegal settlement of Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem.
Israeli bulldozers have razed Palestinian lands in Khirbet Umm al-Kheir in the southern West Bank district of Hebron to expand the nearby illegal settlement of Karmiel. The European Union (EU) called in vain upon the Israeli military to halt demolitions and confiscations of Palestinian homes and caravans set up as schools, and return the confiscated equipment and structures.
Abbas and the US Kushner-led delegation agreed to ‘continue dialogue with the purpose of reaching a comprehensive and historical peace deal.’ Abbas who has never heard Trump or Kushner say that they support a two-state resolution is trying in vain to get clarification. During a meeting with the Israeli left-wing Meretz party, Abbas expressed this ‘confusion’ regarding the US stance on Israel and Palestine, saying he ‘can’t understand’ the Trump administration’s position on the conflict.
‘I have met with Trump envoys about 20 times since the beginning of his term as president of the United States,’ Haaretz quoted Abbas as saying, and that he still ‘can’t understand’ the Trump administration’s position on the conflict. Behind a very flimsy smoke screen, Trump is getting ready to use a combination of Saudi and Gulf money and Israeli terrorism, to seek to convince Abbas that the only historic historic deal available is one state dominated by Israel, in which it will be said that a Palestinian majority is a possibility in a couple of decades.
Imperialism is 100% in its support for Israel. This has been confirmed by the UK government not even being willing to discuss the call of PLO leader Saeb Erekat that the UK should recognise the state of Palestine and cancel its scheduled celebrations in November of the Balfour Declaration centenary. The harsh truth is that Palestinians will not be liberated by a deal with Israel, the US and Saudi Arabia.
The state of Palestine will come into being via the revolutionary struggle of the Palestinian people, with the workers of the world giving their full and 100% support. It is in fact; ‘Revolution Until Victory!’
