Uprooted Palestinian: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM – سلام القدس عليكم: «Israel» Now Wants Trump to Reject Palestinian Right of Return

Local Editor

27-01-2018 | 10:15

A day after US President Donald Trump declared that he had taken the vexed issue of al-Quds’ [Jerusalem’s] fate “off the table” for so-called “peace” negotiations, the “Israeli” entity’s next goal is to have the US similarly make plain that it rejects demands for a right of return of millions of Palestinians to “Israeli” – annexed Palestine, a TV report said Friday.

Quoting what it said were diplomats who are following the process, Hadashot TV news said that now that Trump has declared al-Quds to be the “Israeli” entity’s so-called “capital”, “the assessment is that the next step will be to remove the right of return” from the list of final status issues to be resolved.

After that is done, the TV report said, Trump will present the “proposal for ‘peace'” that he spoke of on Thursday – a proposal, the Hadashot TV reporter remarked, that might better be described “perhaps as the Netanyahu plan” since it is expected to meet many of the “Israeli” prime minister’s demands.

The Palestinian Authority has been boycotting the Trump administration since December 6, when Trump formally recognized al-Quds as the entity’s so-called “capital” and said he would move the US embassy to the holy city from Tel Aviv. In that address, the president said the boundaries of “Israeli” sovereignty in al-Quds would still have to be negotiated by the two sides. Sitting with Netanyahu in Davos on Thursday, however, Trump said: “We took ‘Jerusalem’ [al-Quds] off the table, so we don’t have to talk about it anymore.” He added, turning to Netanyahu, “You won one point, and you’ll give up some other points later on in the negotiation.”

At previous talks, the Palestinians have always demanded, along with sovereignty in the occupied West Bank, Gaza, East al-Quds and the Old City, a right of return to occupied Palestine for Palestinian refugees who left or were forced out by “Israel” when the entity was established. The Palestinians demand this right not only for those of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who are still alive but also for their descendants, who number in the millions. No “Israeli” regime would ever be likely to accept this demand.

In his unscripted remarks to the press on Thursday, Trump said the US would no longer transfer monetary aid to the Palestinians unless they entered negotiations with the “Israeli” entity, and excoriated the Palestinian leadership’s reaction to his decision to recognize al-Quds as the entity’s so-called capital.

“That money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace, because I can tell you that ‘Israel’ does want to make ‘peace’, and they’re going to have to want to make ‘peace’, too, or we’re going to have nothing to do with it any longer,” he said.

The US is also considering shutting down the offices of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Washington, the de facto embassy of the Palestinian Authority in the US, if Ramallah continues to refuse to take part in so-called “peace” talks, Hadashot TV news reported Thursday.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

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