Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said today, Sunday, that the US President Donald Trump´s plan is very dangerous because it deals with a model based on trying to defeat the Palestinians to surrender and then acquiesce, stressing that "we will not be defeated, surrender or accept With any initiative that does not achieve the minimum level of justice for our people. "
Shtayyeh stressed during a symposium on Palestine within the work of the 56th session of the Munich Security Conference, that "the implementation of the plan began before it was announced, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel, stopping all aid to UNRWA, as well as stopping funding to the Palestinian government."
He added: "The American proposal is not for negotiation, but for implementation. It gave the Israelis the right to annex the Palestinian rivers, Jerusalem and other areas immediately, as yesterday an American-Israeli committee was formed to finalize the annexation maps."
He continued: "This plan is nothing more than a memorandum of understanding between Netanyahu and Trump. We can never call it a peace plan, which is part of the two campaigns for them, especially when we talk about the timing of announcing it."
The Prime Minister stressed: "This plan does not provide more than Bantustans, as the Palestinians are isolated on islands that are not connected to each other, with tunnels or bridges connected to them, which Israel can close at any time."
On the economic aspect of the American plan, Shtayyeh stressed that "the money in the proposal is not intended to support the political track, but rather to trade policy for money, which is simply a price for concession."
Shtayyeh added: "The Palestinians are united in rejecting this plan, as are the Arabs who clearly rejected it at the summit of foreign ministers, as well as Islamic countries, the African Union, most European countries and Jewish institutions in the United States, members of Congress and the US Senate, all of them rejected this plan."
He stressed: "Trump has no international partner, neither in Europe nor the Arab world nor Palestine. Trump´s plan was born dead and will be buried soon."
Shtayyeh said: "Bilateral negotiations have failed as a model for solving the Palestinian issue, and we must move from bilateral to multi, and that international law be a reference for this process as well as United Nations resolutions," calling for the creation of an international coalition to protect the two-state solution, which has international consensus.
He continued: "I call on Europe to seriously respond to the Trump initiative, and that the foreign ministers´ meeting come out tomorrow with a clear rejection of this proposal, and fill the void created by the US administration with its total bias towards Israel by holding an international conference based on the legitimacy of the state for Palestine."
Shtayyeh called for recognition of the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, in response to Israeli measures to annex parts of the Palestinian territories.
He also called for focusing on supporting and maintaining UNRWA in the face of American attempts to dry up its financial resources, in order to remove the refugee issue from prolonged negotiations.
On the other hand, Shtayyeh called on the executive heads and the heads of the councils of companies operating in the settlements, based on the record recently published by the Human Rights Council, to take this warning seriously, as they will be legally responsible for all the illegal steps taken by these companies in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He continued: "As we decided to gradually dismantle the colonial dependency imposed on us by the fact that Palestine is under occupation, we are trying to succeed at the micro level in light of the failure at the comprehensive political level."
Shtayyeh concluded by saying: "What we want is very simple: ending the occupation, establishing our independent state on the 1967 borders, which is only 22% of historic Palestine, this is a historic settlement accepted by the Palestinians, and they are still until now."
