Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday at a ceremony in Ramallah that the Trump administration's Israeli-Palestinian Arab peace plan "will go to hell."
According to a report in Axios, Abbas said that whoever wants to solve the Palestinian issue needs to start with solving the political aspect of it, "and not try to sell illusions of billions of dollars".
"The ‘Deal of the Century’ or the deal of disgrace will go to hell and the economic project they are working on for next month will also go to hell ... we said we are not going to accept this meeting and its results because they are selling us illusions that will lead to nothing," stressed the PA chairman.
Abbas was referring to the “Peace to Prosperity” economic workshop, which will be held on June 25 and 26 in Bahrain. Senior White House officials said last week that the Trump administration is planning to release the economic component of its upcoming Middle East peace plan during that workshop.
The PA immediately announced that it would boycott the economic conference, with its “information minister” Nabil Abu Rudeineh saying that the conference would be a meaningless meeting that was part of a meaningless plan.
On Sunday, the PLO Executive Committee called on the world to boycott the Bahrain conference, saying it hadn’t “authorized any party to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people.”
Abbas and other PA officials have been boycotting the US administration since President Donald Trump broke with decades of consensus and recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December of 2017.
The PA has also rejected the US peace plan before it has even been unveiled, claiming it is biased in Israel’s favor.
