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Initiative seeks to alleviate the crisis in
Gaza while allowing Arab world to adjust to the fact that a comprehensive peace
plan may exclude the Palestinian Authority • PA
President Abbas "has to wake up before it is too late," Ramallah
official says.
Arab officials
confirmed to Israel Hayom over the weekend that the
regional peace plan being devised by the United States
will focus on resolving the humanitarian crisis in the
Gaza Strip prior to dealing with the other cardinal
issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
U.S. President Donald
Trump, who has billed the plan as the "deal of the
century," is determined to push it through with the
help of the moderate Arab state – Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – even if it means
going over Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas'
head, the officials said.
Abbas declared that he
would not engage with the U.S. on peace talks after Trump
officially recognized
Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December and
subsequently relocated the American Embassy in Israel
from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The Palestinian leader
maintains that these moves clearly demonstrate Trump's
pro-Israel bias and therefore the U.S. cannot act as an
impartial peace broker between Israel and the
Palestinians.
The officials noted
that the American plan to solve the crisis in Gaza was
also the reason why, despite the growing tensions on the
Israel-Gaza border, both Israel and Hamas are trying to
avoid escalation.
Senior Arab diplomats
familiar with the plan as well as top Ramallah officials,
said that Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi
have repeatedly urged Abbas to meet with U.S. officials
and discuss the plan but to no avail.
Given Abbas' prolonged
rejectionism, moderate Arab leaders see no other choice
but to go over his head and have decided to back
Washington's plan to present the peace plan to the Palestinian
people directly, the diplomats said.
A high-ranking
Jordanian diplomat told Israel Hayom that during senior
White House adviser Jared Kushner and Special
Representative for International Negotiations Jason
Greenblatt's recent visit to the region,
they explained the tenets of the plan, which focused on
"neutralizing the Gaza issue."
Hamas ousted Abbas'
Fatah movement from the Gaza Strip in a military coup in
2007, essentially splitting the Palestinian Authority in
two. The Western-backed Abbas and Gaza's rulers have
signed several reconciliation deals over the past decade,
most recently in 2017, but all have collapsed before the ink was even dry, mostly over Hamas' adamant refusal to disarm.
The 2007 coup prompted
Israel and Egypt to place a blockade on Gaza, so as to thwart Hamas' efforts to
smuggle terrorists and weapons into the enclave. But a decade of Hamas rule has brought Gaza to the brink of
disaster, and the ongoing rift between the rival Palestinian
factions has also been clouding domestic and foreign policies in moderate Arab
states, whose leaders are now pushing for a solution that would alleviate
Gazans' distress.
According to Arab
diplomats familiar with the details of the plan, the American scheme includes a
long-term cease-fire agreement between Israel and the Gaza-based terrorist
groups, which would be mediated by the moderate Arab states.
Once the cease-fire
agreement takes effect and proves lasting, a series of economic programs will
be implemented to improve the situation in Gaza, where unemployment nears 50%.
These projects, as well as a series of infrastructural rehabilitation plans –
including the construction of a special Palestinian port in Cyprus –
will be sponsored by the international community.
"A regional peace
plan would be viable only if it includes the changing reality in the Gaza
Strip," a senior Jordanian official told Israel Hayom.
"The blockade on
Gaza cannot continue. The Strip is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster and
if that happens, both Israel and the moderate Arab states would be made to pay
a price, and especially the Palestinian leadership.
"Unfortunately,
by refusing any diplomatic move mediated by the U.S. and declaring he will
boycott the Americans' efforts, Abu Mazen [Abbas] is excluding himself from the
negotiations over the arrangements in Gaza," he said.
A senior Egyptian
official also confirmed that resolving the Gaza crisis would be the first step
in the U.S. peace plan.
"Trump and his
people have proven that they can think outside the box and suggest creative
solutions. … Abu Mazen and the Palestinian Authority have not ruled Gaza for
over a decade and the bottom line is that any deal involving Gaza will
ultimately be in the hands of those controlling it on the ground, meaning
Hamas," he said, stressing that Cairo would back the U.S. plan even if it
meant sidelining Abbas.
Other Arab officials
said that the idea behind the "Gaza first" initiative seeks to both
alleviate the crisis in the enclave while allowing the Arab world to adjust to
the idea that a more comprehensive peace plan would exclude the current
leadership in Ramallah.
"This will ease
the blockade and allow for the implementation of dozens of projects that have
already been approved and funded," one official said.
A senior Palestinian
official told Israel Hayom that "there is great concern in the rais'
[Abbas'] office over Trump's move. Obviously, neither Trump nor anyone else can
make Hamas and the other groups in Gaza disarm, but unless Abu Mazen rethinks
his steps he may find himself as irrelevant as [Yasser] Arafat was at the end
of his days.
"Trump pursues
unconventional diplomacy – something that North Korea and Iran have come to
realize – and it seems that the Arab states and the Europeans have come to
accept it," he continued. "Only Abbas remains obstinate and the
Palestinian people will end up paying the price.
"This is not the
leadership Abu Mazen had envisioned and it is definitely not the legacy he
wants to leave behind. He has to wake up and come to grips with the plan Trump
and the Arab states are promoting, before it is too late," he warned.
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