The Palestinian Authority is scrambling to mobilize the Arab States against the Trump peace plan with very little success, Arab and US officials told Barak Ravid of Israel's Channel 13 News on Friday.
In fact, the report said, many Arab states are privately and publicly pressing the Palestinian Arabs to return to the negotiating table for a better deal.
The report comes ahead of a meeting of foreign ministers of the Arab League member states to convene on Saturday in Cairo at the request of the Palestinians. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas is expected to call on the Arab foreign ministers to back the Palestinians and pass a resolution criticizing the Trump plan.
Negotiations are quietly going on among the Arab countries about the text of the resolution that will be voted on at Saturday’s meeting, reported Ravid.
The Palestinian Arabs, together with Lebanon and Qatar, are pushing for a text the criticizes the Trump plan, Arab officials said, while Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia want a more neutral text that calls for resuming peace talks but does not criticize Trump.
The Trump administration has also asked several Arab countries to make sure the Arab League meeting doesn’t end with a resolution against the White House peace plan, US officials told Ravid.
Ravid noted that the UAE's foreign minister, Abdullah Bin Zayed, wrote a very unusual tweet on Friday criticizing the PA position on the Trump plan. The tweet linked to a New York Times opinion piece written by Bret Stephens and entitled “Every Time Palestinians Say ‘No,’ They Lose”.
The UAE is one of the Trump administration’s staunchest allies in the Arab world. It was one of three Arab countries that sent ambassadors to the unveiling ceremony of the Trump plan on Tuesday, together with Bahrain and Oman. The UAE also issued a statement calling the Trump plan “a good start” and called the Palestinians to re-engage with the US.
Ravid notes that many Arab states have issued statements that were balanced or even and supportive of the US peace plan. Arab governments offered very little criticism of the plan.
Of note, Jordan who was the only Arab ally of the US to raise publicly reservations about the plan, and it avoided criticizing Trump.
Abbas immediately rejected Trump’s peace plan and said it would be relegated to the "dustbin of history."