Abbas confidant: If Trump advances Gaza ‘expulsion’ plan, PA will cut ties with US

 

Abbas confidant: If Trump advances Gaza ‘expulsion’ plan, PA will cut ties with US

A senior Palestinian official and confidant to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says that the PA will cut ties with the US if President Donald Trump advances his proposal to take over the Gaza Strip and relocate all of its residents.

In an interview with The Times of Israel from his Ramallah office last week, Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Council member Ahmed Majdalani said implementation of Trump’s proposal would amount to the “expulsion” of Gaza’s roughly 2 million residents, thereby posing an “existential threat” to the Palestinian cause.

Pressed repeatedly as to whether such fervent opposition to the proposal meant the PA was prepared to sever ties with Washington again, Majdalani’s response was the same each time: “Of course.”

“Why would we have ties if Mr. Trump sticks to this proposal?” he said.

The longtime PA minister clarified that Ramallah is prepared to work with Trump if he abandons the idea. He also pointed to comments from top aides to the US president who have softened the proposal and suggested they would be open to shelving it if Arab allies came up with an alternative plan for the post-war management of Gaza that removed Hamas from power. — Times of Israel

Our Take: Hmmm... So it would seem that Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Authority—which has been at odds (both politically and even kinetically, at times) with Hamas since they came into power in Gaza in 2006—have arrived at the same conclusions as me: deducing that President Trump's "Gaza Plan" is merely a proposal, not a real plan of action. And considering that Trump has instructed the Arab partners in the region to get together and come up with a counter-proposal, it is clear that this is now a negotiation, meaning Trump's position is merely an opening offer, and not an intended outcome.

What Trump's rhetoric achieves is removing Netanyahu and the Israelis from the negotiating table, as they are now happy to stand down and allow Trump to take all of the heat for his radical idea—the same idea that Netanyahu has wanted all along. And the more Trump declines the Arab's counter-proposals, as he did on Tuesday, the more confident the Israelis become that Trump will somehow deliver the impossible.

It is possible—and very likely—that Netanyahu is perceptive enough to understand that the final deal will not be exactly what Trump has suggested, and that is likely why we have seen him make preparations to resume the war with Hamas. But the point is that Netanyahu is giving Trump the space to negotiate on behalf of Israel, focusing his own attention instead on more pressing matters.

What President Trump needs right now is time. He needs time to wrap up the Ukraine negotiation with Zelensky and Putin, and posture himself on the geopolitical stage into an alignment with Russia, so that Putin and Trump can present a united front against Netanyahu. That's not something I expect to happen overnight. It will likely happen in stages—the recent Riyadh peace summit being a major milestone, and the forthcoming Putin-brokered Iran nuclear deal being another.

In the meantime, there are other opportunities for President Trump to keep Tel Aviv in a holding pattern. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich met yesterday with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The early reports are rather vanilla, citing boiler plate rhetoric of "strengthening ties of economic interest."

This rhetoric will buy Trump time, but Smotrich's true purpose in the US is to drum up support for annexation of the West Bank. President Trump is expected to make an announcement on that issue, and Tel Aviv is expecting him to endorse conquest. — GhostofBasedPatrickHenry