US committing ‘coup’ against peace: PA

WEST BANK: The Palestinian Authority (PA) condemns the United States’ recent expression of readiness to recognise Israel’s annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories.

The PA’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates released a statement on Tuesday, condemning the announcement made earlier by a US State Department spokesman “in the strongest terms,” the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.

It considered the announcement to be “a flagrant coup against international terms of reference of the peace process, mainly land for peace, the principle of a two-state solution, and the relevant United Nations resolutions that the US administration has replaced with the so-called deal of the century as a vision of President Trump.”

Trump had originally floated recognition of the occupied territories in the “deal of the Century” — a hugely contentious plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that he outlined in late January after years of secrecy. The plan also endorsed Trump’s outrageous recognition in December 2017 of the holy occupied city of Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s “capital,” although Palestinians have historically demanded that the city’s eastern part serve as the capital of their future state.

The PA, which stopped recognizing any negotiating role by Washington after the 2017 move, had already categorically rejected the plot before Trump wheeled it out.The PA Ministry, meanwhile, added that the State Department’s announcement was “an extension of the unqualified US bias to the (Israeli) occupation and its expansionist colonial policies at the expense of the territory of the State of Palestine.”

The Ministry was pointing to Washington’s unwavering support for Tel Aviv in the face of successive UN actions and instances of international condemnation. The support has shielded the Israeli regime against all punitive measures.