Abbas: We are ready to return to the negotiating table

Palestinians are ready to return to the negotiating table with Israel, but with two preconditions: the recognition of Israeli occupation of east Jerusalem and the “vision” of a two-state solution, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told foreign reporters in Ramallah on Sunday.

The Palestinian president said that he would not ask for anything outside of what is already prescribed by the international community as legitimate, including the most recent United Nations Resolution 2334.

“I will go to the White House and continue what I started with [US President] Donald Trump,” Abbas said.

The Palestinian president explained that in his first meeting with Trump, the US president spoke about a vision for a two-state solution, telling Abbas that, “I will not accept a one-state solution because one state will be an apartheid state.”

A few weeks later, Abbas continued, Trump surprised him when he notified the PA that Washington would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Soon after, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman made statements that “there is no occupied territory and Israel has the right to build settlements all over Palestinian land,” in Abbas’s words.

“I then understood that Trump diverted,” Abbas said, adding that “there is no potential for a political solution” with Trump. He said that the Trump administration talks of a “Deal of the Century,” but that “we will not deal with this administration on this basis.”

Nonetheless, Abbas made it clear that despite his estranged relationship with the current US administration, the PA continues to coordinate with Washington on issues of security.

“The security coordination to date between us and the US administration – us and the CIA – remains, and we are not ashamed to say that,” Abbas told the foreign press. “The security coordination is to combat terrorism in the world. And we are the first people who wish to fight terrorism in the world, and therefore we have concluded agreements not only with the US administration but with 83 states in the world.

“We preserved this agreement because terrorism is an enemy of humanity,” he said.

Abbas concluded that the security coordination between Israel and the PA remains intact as well.