PA quits Arab League role in protest against peace deal

bloc’s failure to take a stand against Israeli-Arab deals, an official said Tuesday.

PA foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki announced the decision to resign from the rotating presidency of the Council of the Arab League, after its failure to agree a draft resolution condemning a normalization accord between the UAE and Israel.

“The state of Palestine… refuses to record in its history the association of its presidency with the regression in values and principles that was evident in the last meeting of the council of foreign ministers,” Maliki said in Ramallah.

The PA presided over the council’s latest session earlier this month and had been due to stay in the role until March.

Their delegation had tabled a draft resolution at the meeting of the council, which brings together foreign ministers of the 22-member bloc, to condemn the normalization accord.

The Cairo meeting came ahead of another such deal being announced by Bahrain with the Jewish state. Both deals were signed in Washington on September 15.

The Gulf agreements broke with years of Arab League policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict and were condemned by the PA as a “betrayal”.

In 2002, the bloc adopted a Saudi-proposed peace plan which was renewed as recently as 2017. It offered normalization only in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from territories it liberated in the 1967 Six-Day War, a Palestinian state with eastern Jerusalem as its capital and a “just” solution for the descendants of Palestinian Arab refugees.

The Arab plan has been pushed aside by the US administration, which after several delays unveiled a peace blueprint of its own in January.

It promised Washington’s blessing for Israel’s eventual application of its sovereignty in parts of Judea and Samaria.

The United Arab Emirates government hailed a clause in its US-brokered deal that appeared to put any Israeli sovereignty plans on hold.

But Israel has stated that sovereignty plans remained on the table.