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Abbas Ends Cooperation with U.S., Israel, including Security Coordination

Speaking to the Arab League’s emergency meeting in Cairo convened to respond to President Trump’s “vision” for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared an end to all cooperation – including security – between the PA, the U.S., and Israel. Abbas had made the threat often, but pundits opine a lack of any other course sufficiently dramatic to convey the Palestinian outrage at the Trump plan. Abbas made a point of relating how he had refused to take a phone call from the American president who sought to discuss the initiative, and how he would later refuse to accept a letter from President Trump as well. At the League meeting, member nations were in agreement that there could be no plan that does not create a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital. Even the three Arab nations whose ambassadors attended the White House ceremony thereby bestowing implicit support for the plan have since accused the American administration of withholding key elements of the “vision” that render it unacceptable. At the present time it appears that the effort will not have any support from the Arab world, reinforcing the Russian assertion that the plan cannot be implemented.