Erekat accuses US of trying to overthrow Palestinian authority

Bloomberg

A top Palestinian official accused the US of trying to overthrow Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in an attempt to discredit an American peace mission it is shunning.
The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority broke off contact with the US in December over its Jerusalem policy, and has not been party to the meetings that negotiators Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt have conducted with Middle East leaders this week.
The envoys are trying to drum up support for the Palestinian economy, and especially the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, reasoning that greater prosperity will create more conducive conditions for peacemaking.
The PA sees the mission as an attempt to divide and weaken the Palestinians. On June 23, Palestine Liberation Organization secretary general Saeb Erekat accused the US of “creating a state of destabilisation and confusion in the West Bank” in order to “target the leadership.” A proposal to redirect to Gaza the tax revenue that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority is meant to sustain Hamas’s violent takeover of the territory, “while bringing down the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank,” he told Voice of Palestine radio, according to the official Wafa news agency.
Erekat’s comments were some of the harshest towards the US since relations disintegrated in December over President Donald Trump’s decision to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, whose eastern sector the Palestinians seek as a future capital.
Abbas’s spokesman said the Trump team’s mission to the Middle East will run into a dead end if it tries to dodge political issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Palestinians want the focus to be on resolving issues such as borders, the status of the holy city and refugees, and not on bolstering the economies of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said. “The American administration must understand the important need to stop pursuing imaginary political alternatives and projects aimed at splitting the Palestinian homeland to prevent the establishment of our Palestinian state,” Abu Rudeina said.

Jared Kushner faults Palestinian
leaders, says peace plan imminent
Bloomberg

Donald Trump plans to publicly release a Middle East peace plan soon even though the US has ceased communication with Palestinian leaders, the president’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner said in an interview with a Palestinian newspaper.
“If President Abbas is willing to come back to the table, we are ready to engage; if he is not, we will likely air the plan publicly,” Kushner said in the interview with Al-Quds, referring to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Kushner met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on June 23 as he completed a round of visits to Mideast leaders that didn’t include Abbas. Asked when the US peace proposal would be released Kushner said “soon.’’
“We are almost done,” he added.
The Palestinians cut off talks with the US after Trump announced last year he would move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Abbas decried the move and has since rejected meetings with top officials from Trump’s government. The Palestinians have long sought to establish the capital of a future Palestinian state in East Jerusalem.