Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas firmly rejected the Trump administration’s plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Tuesday, calling it the “the slap of the century.”
Abbas addressed the plan in a speech to senior Palestinian leaders, including representatives of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups, at the PA presidential headquarters in Ramallah.
“We say a thousand times: No, no and no to the ‘deal of the century,’” Abbas said, adding that the US plan “will not come to pass” and that “our people will send it to the dustbins of history.”
Quelle surprise! The Palestinians rejected the much better (for them) Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert peace plans in 2000 and 2008 respectively, so Trump’s always looked like a non-starter. To quote ad nauseam former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban: the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Still, all hope is not lost. Why? Because, funnily enough, Abbas’ response is a mathematical conundrum. “No, no and no” makes three in my book. So does he mean three times “no”, a thousand times “no” or 3,000 times “no”? Indeed, it could be 1-2-3 times a maybe. Now, in Arab culture everything is usually either black or white, so this kind of ambiguity might lead to a change of mind over the next four years that the new plan can be chewed over. Indeed, given the old Holocaust denier’s age and questionable health, there could well be a new leader taking over the reins of the Palestinian Authority, perhaps someone with more courage. By the way, following my previous blog in which I quoted our family Cava-poo Toffee as calling Abbas an a***hole for his denigration of dogs, she has pointed out that the correct Google Translate version for “Woof, woof” is the more literal “faecal orifice”. I stand corrected.
Roger Radford Journalist & Author 