RAMALLAH, KOMPAS.com – Prime Minister Palestine Mohammad Shtayyeh said if Donald Trump get another deep win presidential election AS coming, it will be a disaster for its people and the world at large.
In comments made during a meeting with European legislators on Tuesday (13/10/2020), Shtayyeh said that the last 4 years of the Trump administration have cost Palestinians a lot.
“If we are going to live 4 more years with President Trump, God help us, God help you and God help the whole world,” Shtayyeh said as quoted by the press. Al Jazeera on Tuesday (13/10/2020).
Shtayyeh’s remarks repeated comments he made the day before in a virtual speech at the European Parliament. The comment he also posted on his Facebook page.
“If things are going to change in the United States, I think it will reflect itself directly on the Palestinian- Israel, “said Shtayyeh, referring to the presidential candidate from the Democratic Party Joe Biden, if winning the presidential election, on November 3.
“And it will reflect himself (Biden) in the Palestinian-American bilateral relationship,” he added.
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Trump and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Palestinians have traditionally refrained from taking explicit public positions in US presidential elections.
Shtayyeh’s comments reflect a sense of despair on the Palestinian side after a series of controversial moves by Washington, including the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in late 2017, followed by the relocation of the embassy there.
At the time, Palestinian leaders, who see occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, said the US was no longer an honest broker in negotiations.
Afterward, the US closed the Palestinian Liberation Organization mission office in Washington in response to the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to hold US-led talks with Israel.
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Trump also cut hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid to Palestine, and earlier this year issued a so-called “Middle East plan”, which Palestinians rejected outright as too lucrative to staunch US ally Israel.
It casts a shadow of Israel’s annexation of large swaths of the occupied West Bank including illegal Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley, and gives Israel a permanent eastern border along the Jordan River.
The Trump administration has also said it no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal. That means he reversed decades of US policy, a move condemned by Palestinians and human rights groups.
Recently, the Trump administration has also persuaded two Gulf Arab states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, as well as encouraging other Arab countries to follow suit.
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The deal announced in August was condemned by Palestinians as grave treason by Arab states, further undermining their efforts to achieve self-determination.
They also undermine the traditional Arab consensus that recognition of Israel will only come in return for an independent Palestinian state.
For now, the majority of Arab states say they remain committed to the Arab Peace Initiative, which calls for Israel’s complete withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories after 1967 in exchange for full peace and relations.
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