PA: Only the map of ‘Palestine’ counts

The Palestinian Authority on Saturday night dismissed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s statement that “we are in the process of mapping the territory that, according to the Trump plan, will be part of the State of Israel. This is 800 kilometers of borders, a large area.”

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the official spokesman for PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said that “the map we know is the map of the State of Palestine within the borders of June 4, 1967 and its capital Al-Quds (Jerusalem), and we will not deal with other maps.”

Abu Rudeineh stressed that the map of the “State of Palestine” is also the map that the world recognizes in accordance with UN resolutions and is the only one that can guarantee security, peace and stability in the region and in the world, and all other maps mean that the “occupation” will continue and therefore cannot be accepted.

Netanyahu’s comments were made on Saturday night at a conference in Maaleh Adumim, in which he warned that “without Judea and Samaria, our existence is in danger.”

Regarding the US peace plan, Netanyahu said, “Last week we reached the climax: The Deal of the Century. It includes a historic revolution. Until now, all the diplomatic plans required Israel to agree to make real concessions. They called it ‘gestures.’ The Palestinians were not required to give anything. Now the exact opposite has happened: Israel is receiving real things, and the Palestinians are required to fulfill a list of demands. Whether or not they fulfill those requirements, Israel will receive US backing to apply Israeli law in the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea areas and over all of the Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria – all of them, without exception.”

Abbas rejected the US peace plan outright, stating that the plan would be relegated to the “dustbin of history.”

The PA chairman will travel to the United Nations this week to push for a Security Council resolution condemning Trump’s peace proposals, though that resolution will more than likely be vetoed by the US.