JERICHO: A senior Palestinian official hit back at Donald Trump on Friday after the US president said he would withhold aid to the Palestinians until they returned to peace negotiations.
Chief negotiator Saeb Erekat accused the US of acting in bad faith and denied that Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas had refused to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The last offer for Netanyahu to come to meet Abu Mazen” came from Russian President Vladimir Putin who invited them both to the World Cup final in July, Erekat said, using the Arabic nickname for Abbas.
“Abu Mazen accepted and Netanyahu rejected, that is the truth,” he told journalists in English.
“And then we have some statements from the White House saying that we continue punishing the Palestinians until they come back to the negotiating table. Which negotiating table?“
Trump has repeatedly said he aims for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, but the Palestinians have refused to meet with his administration since the US leader controversially recognized the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017.
The Palestinians consider the annexed eastern sector of the city as their capital, and the status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest issues in their conflict with Israel.
Erekat said Trump’s decision had violated a pledge he made to Abbas in May 2017 that his administration would not adopt any radical steps for 12 months to encourage peace talks.
The Trump administration has cut funds to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees and also scrapped around $200 million in payments by USAID to the Palestinians.
A much vaunted peace proposal has been delayed multiple times.
Trump said Thursday he had cut the funds to force the Palestinians to negotiate.
“The United States was paying them tremendous amounts of money. And I’d say, you’ll get money, but we’re not paying you until we make a deal. If we don’t make a deal, we’re not paying,” he told Jewish leaders in Washington.
“I think it’s disrespectful when people don’t come to the table.”
US-brokered peace talks have been frozen since they collapsed in 2014 amid mutual accusations of blame.
Erekat said the Trump administration’s policies were weakening moderates and encouraging radicals across the Middle East.
“If the art of their negotiations is to put us in a position where we have nothing to lose, I think they succeeded,” he said, referring to the president’s business credentials.
Palestinians reject Trump bid to force talks through aid cut
Palestinians reject Trump bid to force talks through aid cut
- Chief negotiator Saeb Erekat accused the US of acting in bad faith.
- He also denied that Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas had refused to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Baghdad says it will prosecute Daesh militants being moved from Syria to Iraq
- The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq
BAGHDAD: Baghdad will prosecute and try militants from the Daesh group who are being transferred from prisons and detention camps in neighboring Syria to Iraq under a US-brokered deal, Iraq said Sunday.
The announcement from Iraq’s highest judicial body came after a meeting of top security and political officials who discussed the ongoing transfer of some 9,000 IS detainees who have been held in Syria since the militant group’s collapse there in 2019.
The need to move them came after Syria’s nascent government forces last month routed Syrian Kurdish-led fighters — once top US allies in the fight against Daesh — from areas of northeastern Syria they had controlled for years and where they had been guarding camps holding Daesh prisoners.
Syrian troops seized the sprawling Al-Hol camp — housing thousands, mostly families of Daesh militants — from the Kurdish-led force, which withdrew as part of a ceasefire. Troops last Monday also took control of a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, from where some Daesh detainees had escaped during the fighting. Syrian state media later reported that many were recaptured.
Now, the clashes between the Syrian military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, sparked fears of Daesh activating its sleeper cells in those areas and of Daesh detainees escaping. The Syrian government under its initial agreement with the Kurds said it would take responsibility of the Daesh prisoners.
Baghdad has been particularly worried that escaped Daesh detainees would regroup and threaten Iraq’s security and its side of the vast Syria-Iraq border.
Once in Iraq, Daesh prisoners accused of terrorism will be investigated by security forces and tried in domestic courts, Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq. On Sunday, another 125 Daesh prisoners were transferred, according to two Iraqi security officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
So far, 275 prisoners have made it to Iraq, a process that officials say has been slow as the US military has been transporting them by air.
Both Damascus and Washington have welcomed Baghdad’s offer to have the prisoners transferred to Iraq.
Iraq’s parliament will meet later on Sunday to discuss the ongoing developments in Syria, where its government forces are pushing to boost their presence along the border.
The fighting between the Syrian government and the SDF has mostly halted with a ceasefire that was recently extended. According to Syria’s Defense Ministry, the truce was extended to support the ongoing transfer operation by US forces.
The Daesh group was defeated in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later, but Daesh sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries. As a key US ally in the region, the SDF played a major role in defeating Daesh.
During the battles against Daesh, thousands of extremists and tens of thousands of women and children linked to them were taken and held in prisons and at the Al-Hol camp. The sprawling Al-Hol camp hosts thousands of women and children.
Last year, US troops and their partner SDF fighters detained more than 300 Daesh militants in Syria and killed over 20. An ambush in December by Daesh militants killed two US soldiers and one American civilian interpreter in Syria.
