Abbas’ insults came hours after Friedman chided the Palestinian president over social media for his silence following an attack on two Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank on Friday. Cpt. Ziv Daos, 20, and Sgt. Netanel Kahalani, 21, were killed when Palestinian Ala Qabha, 20, rammed his car into a military site. In response to the deadly encounter, Friedman, who has made previous comments condemning the killings of Israelis, posted Monday morning:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sits in front of a picture of the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City during a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank city of Ramallah on March 19, 2018. (Photo: Osama Falah/ APA Images)

The ambassador seemingly struck a nerve as Abbas told senior Palestinian officials, “David Friedman, a son of a bitch, is a settler and his family are settlers and he serves as the American ambassador in Tel Aviv,” reported the Palestinian outlet Arab48.

The controversy continued into the late afternoon when Friedman made a statement at a conference in Israel, suggesting Abbas’ comment was antisemitic.

“I saw his response on my iPhone. His response was to refer to me as son of a dog. Is that anti-Semitism or political discourse? I leave that up to you,” Friedman said. 

Before Friedman took over the post as ambassador to Israel he was a bankruptcy lawyer for President Donald Trump and was the president of the American Friends of Beit El Institutions, a fundraising group for an Israeli settlement of the same name.

Abbas also mocked the White House for hosting a forum on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza last Tuesday with 29 nations in attendance, but did not include Palestinian leaders.

“Now the Americans wake up to supporting Gaza after 11 years, we have full responsibility over this sector,” Abbas said.

The Ramallah meeting of Abbas’ leadership council was ordered to discuss an assassination attempt on the Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and the head of security Majd Faraj that took place in Gaza last week when the officials were due to met with Hamas leaders over stagnated reconciliation talks. The roadside bomb exploded on the prime minister’s convoy on Tuesday, no party claimed responsibility. Hamdallah and Faraj survived the blasts that injured six.
 

A damaged vehicle of the convoy of Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah is seen after an explosion in the northern Gaza Strip March 13, 2018. Hamdallah cut short a rare visit to Gaza on Tuesday after an explosion targeted his convoy, a source in the delegation said. The premier, who was not hurt, left Gaza Strip through the Erez crossing shortly after opening a wastewater treatment facility, the source said. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)
 

After the motorcade was targeted Hamas closed the offices of two West Bank mobile phone firms operating in Gaza and detained employees for questioning reportedly over tracking the owners of SIM cards who were allegedly involved in plotting the bombing.

But Abbas is not waiting for the results of the inquiry. Today he blamed Hamas for the attack and said, “If the assassination had succeeded, it would have disastrous consequences for the Palestinian people and open the way for a bloody and civil war.”

Abbas announced coming sanctions on Gaza.

“As the president of the Palestinian people who bears the brunt of reconciliation with Hamas, I decided to take national, financial and legal measures,” he said.

Courtesy: http://mondoweiss.net

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Abbas told the UN ambassadors he met with the Trump “four times in 2017” and “repeatedly reaffirmed” his commitment to a two-state solution. “Yet this administration has not clarified its position. Is it for the two-State solution, or for one-State?” Abbas questioned.

Yet Abbas, however frustrated with the U.S., told the Security Council he is not ready to part ways.

The Palestinian leadership has sought in recent years an international team of negotiators in which the U.S. is but one of many foreign government brokering a deal with Israel. Palestinians hope international involvement will give them a better agreement than working with the U.S. alone.

Abbas then called for an international conference taking place “mid-2018” in Moscow. He outlined principles tied to previous UN resolutions and commitments signed by both Israel and the Palestinians: mutual recognition between Israel and a state of Palestine based on 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital, a halt to settlement growth, “minimal land swaps, in equal value and ratio,” a “just and agreed solution for the Palestine refugees,” and “halting transfer of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.”

Abbas included an off-the-cuff warning for Europe on the issue of honoring international law, guaranteeing Palestinian refugees the right to return. Abbas said, “It’s either that or they will become refugees and terrorists in Europe.”

The conference will be a second of its kind. A similar summit was held in France in January 2017. The U.S. and Israel boycotted the meeting.

While speeches were still on-going in New York, Palestinian commentators in Ramallah began criticizing Abbas for re-playing his strategy. Abbas’ former advisor Diana Buttu said his “address was yet another iteration of speeches long ago, in which he once again implored the world to convene an international conference to address Palestinian rights.”

In Washington, Zaha Hassan, an attorney and fellow at New America who was a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team from 2010 to 2012 said, “The best Abbas can hope for is that the world will not break ranks and join the U.S. in twisting international law and principles to Israel’s will.”

“The help Abbas seeks will have to be led from Palestinians themselves, not from outside,” she added.

After Abbas spoke, UN ambassador Nikki Haley addressed the Security Council, saying: “The Palestinian leadership has a choice to make between two different paths.” Abbas can resume pre-talks with the Trump administration, or choose a “path of absolutist demands, hateful rhetoric, and incitement to violence.”
She went on: “Our negotiators are sitting right behind me, ready to talk. But we will not chase after you. The choice, Mr. President, is yours.”

The White House envoys Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kushner, who is Donald Trump’s son-in-law, do not usually attend this forum, but they were seated nearby.

Haley also took a moment to address Palestinian official Saeb Erekat, who a month earlier told her to “shut up” in an interview.

“I will not shut up,” she emphatically stated, “Rather, I will respectfully speak some hard truths.”

When Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon took the microphone to speak, Abbas got up and walked out the exit. “I expected Mr. Abbas to stay with us and have a dialogue unfortunately he is once again running away,” Danon said, later affirming, “The only way to move forward is with direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.” 

Later in the day White House spokesperson Josh Raffel who deals with the Middle East portfolio issued a statement that the Trump administration “will continue working on our plan which is designed to benefit both the Israeli and Palestinian people. We will present it when it is done and the time is right.”
Raffel noticeably had a few positive words on Abbas. “[H]is recognition that Jerusalem is holy to Jews in addition to Muslims and Christians is a step in the right direction.”

A veteran peace processor also praised the speech.

Courtesy: http://mondoweiss.net
 

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President Donald Trump visiting the Western Wall. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

I went to report from Bab al-Karamah for the few days it thrived prior to the Israeli military dismantling it and a group of teenagers from the village pulled my attention to the valley below. There, a team of construction workers were laboring on a tunnel for a high-speed rail line from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. Unlike the “village” we were standing in, the train line had permits from the Israeli government, but lacked permission from the Palestinian owners of the land who reside in Beit Iksa.

Palestinians will tell you that Israeli restrictions on construction is causing cramped conditions, even in small towns like Beit Iksa that have acres upon acres of open space. Israelis will tell you that traffic is really bad between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem during rush hour, and so the idea of a fast train that runs through the West Bank was popularly supported. Given this equation Palestinians were powerless to prevent the train from being built. The villagers petitioned Israel’s high court to stop the construction on the grounds that the land was illegally taken from them, and lost. 
 

A Palestinian activist holds a banner near a tent in the new “outpost” named Bab al-Karama (“gate of the honor”) in the village of Beit Iksa, northwest of Jerusalem, January 18, 2013. The Palestinian activists built the outpost on a disputed area where Israel plans to construct part of the separation fence in the Jerusalem vicinity. (Photo: APA Images)
 

The train line was first announced in 2008 and its opening has been delayed because of this six kilometers of track that runs through the occupied Palestinian territory in Beit Iksa and two nearby villages (Yalu and Beit Surik). Pressure from groups that boycott Israel caused a German company to cut out of the project early, and an Italian firm that took over has faced harsh questions about violating international law by participating in a project in occupied territory–both are explained in detail in a 2010 report by the Israeli human rights group Who Profits.

“This line was planned for the exclusive use of Israeli citizens; it is imposed on the local Palestinian residents by the dictates of a military regime, in which they have no representation; and it would be completely inaccessible to the local residents,” wrote Who Profits. 

Now, this train line is back in the news, but this time for an all-together different reason: a stop on the route will be named after Donald Trump, according to a statement made by Israel’s traffic minister yesterday, reported the Jerusalem Post. The station will be near the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, notably in occupied East Jerusalem.

Trump, no stranger to having his name embossed on the facade of feats of construction, received the honor following his December announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“The Western Wall is the holiest place for the Jewish people, and I decided to name the train station that leads to it after president Trump – following his historic and brave decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel,” said transportation minister Israel Katz.

In both the U.S. and Israel, the Trump station is breaking news. The Guardian reported Israel’s transportation minister pulled strings to get the project expedited, yet the depot will not open for at least another four years. When it does, commuters will be able to shuttle between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in just 28-minutes on train departing every 20 or 30 minutes. Right now the drive can take up to two hours during peak congestion and there is no rail line between these cities.
 

(Map: Shai Efrati/Peace Now/Who Profits)
 

As for Beit Iksa’s residents, the train is but one of many worries.

The town is sealed by an Israeli checkpoint that only allows in registered residents of Beit Iksa and internationals. Other Palestinians are prohibited from accessing the village. The hassle this brings to Palestinian families who have lived outside of the area, or have jobs in other towns was recorded by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem in 2016. One woman, Shahinaz ‘Abdallah, 46, said she gets held up at the checkpoint regularly:
 

“I’m afraid to leave the village alone, because on my way back in I’m detained and questioned – why did I come, to whom am I related in the village, and so on. They check on the phone that I really live there. I’m usually kept at the checkpoint about fifteen to thirty minutes, supposedly for inspection. I have to argue with them until they let me in.”

Additionally the town has lost 60 percent of its land to surrounding Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. The settlement of Ramot built houses, a playground and a 9/11 memorial on lands that belong to Beit Iksa. At this year’s memorial ceremony commemorating Americans killed in the terrorist attack, the U.S Ambassador David Friedman was present. Outlets covering the ceremony failed to mention the monument, which includes a piece of debris from Ground Zero, is located in East Jerusalem. Similarly, reporting on the Trump train in this news cycle did not note the rail line darts across a swath of the West Bank.

Courtesy: http://mondoweiss.net
 

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President Donald Trump speaking at the White House in Washington DC in an announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver,” Trump told reporters, “I am delivering. I’ve judged this course of action to be in the best interest of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Trump called recognizing Jerusalem as the capital is a “a long overdue step,” adding, “it is also the right thing to do.”

The U.S. embassy will be relocated to Jerusalem, Trump said. “This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers and planners, so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace,” he explained.

Palestinian leaders renounced the move.

Speaking in Ramallah Saeb Erekat, a former senior Palestinian negotiator, told reporters, “I think President Trump tonight disqualified the United States of America to play any role in any peace process.”

“Unfortunately, president Trump just destroyed any possibility of a two-state [solution]. He has taken an action that recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, this is in total contradiction of an agreement signed between Palestinian officials and Israelis,” he continued. 

Erekat did not indicate if  the Palestinians would not longer continue with Trump administration’s efforts to seek a peace deal.

Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Joint List party released a statement, citing “ignorance and arrogance” on the part of Trump,
 

“Trump is not interested in the fate of Israelis, and certainly not in the fate of Palestinians. His speech this evening was a combination of ignorance and arrogance, with complete disregard for its implications. Today Trump threw a match on the Middle East, and the price will be paid by both nations. Trump’s United States officially announced today that it is part of the occupying power, and therefore cannot serve as a broker for talks between Israelis and Palestinians, in any sense. The Palestinian people, along with Israelis working toward peace, will continue their courageous struggle until the occupation ends and a true peace is established.”
 

In Washington the Arab American Institute President’s James Zogby said,
 

“Listening to President Trump’s announcement regarding Jerusalem was profoundly disturbing. It’s a devastating blow: to Muslims and Christians living under harsh Israeli rule in occupied Jerusalem; to Arab and Muslim sensitivities; and to U.S. relations with our Arab allies. It also damages U.S. leadership worldwide, since we have now broken ranks with the E.U. and the rest of the international community. Trump is playing with fire and the consequences will be grave. It was especially troubling to hear the President announcing measures that are bound to provoke and incite violence while at the same time absurdly preaching non-violence and peace.”
 

Conversely, Israeli leaders applauded the announced embassy move and defended it a means to advance peace.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said,
 

“The President’s decision is an important step towards peace, for there is no peace that doesn’t include Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel. I share President Trump’s commitment to advancing peace between Israel and all of our neighbors, including the Palestinians. And we will continue to work with the President and his team to make that dream of peace come true.”
 

President Reuven Rivlin said in a statement,
 

“The recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the relocation of all embassies to the city, is a landmark in the recognition of the right of the Jewish people to our land, and a milestone on our road to peace – peace for all the residents of Jerusalem, and the whole region.”
 

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with President Donald Trump, at the While House. (Photo: Reuters)

Israeli press is also reporting Trump made additional calls to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, to relate his plans.

Trump is expected to announce his plans tomorrow. 

Channel 2’s Dana Weiss, the reporter who broke the story that Trump plans to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital this week, commented on social media that Trump and Netanyahu coordinated the move in advance, intentionally leaving Abbas and Arab heads of state in the dark until today.
Late this afternoon, Netanyahu’s office emailed reporters that the Israeli prime minister will make a speech at Jerusalem’s Waldorf Astoria tomorrow, immediately following Trump’s remarks.

Responses from Ramallah reflect shock. Abbas had a frenzied morning after his talks with Trump, reaching out to U.S. allies and foreign influencers, including Vladimir Putin, in a last-ditch effort to change the course of U.S. policy. The Palestinian leader also phoned pleas to Morocco and Jordan, according to the Palestinian outlet Wafa.

Earlier today, Wafa reported details about Trump’s call to Abbas stating his intention to move the embassy. Abbas “warned of the dangerous repercussions of such step on the [long-stalled] peace process, security and stability in the region and the world,” according to his spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh.

The PLO’s Hanan Ashrawi said moving the embassy would “guarantee the destruction of the two-state solution.” She chided Trump for ignoring “repeated words of advice and caution from all concerned and from global leaders.” She went on:
 

“President Trump seems to be hell-bent on annihilating the chances of peace and destroying the stability and security of the entire region and beyond, provoking violence and playing into the hands of extremists and terrorists around the world. He is willfully committing an act of the utmost folly which is not only illegal but also designed to inflame religious and spiritual sentiments, and raise the specter of sectarianism and religious strife.”

For the Palestinian leadership, Trump’s Jerusalem gambit would constitute a betrayal of agreements signed during the Oslo peace process in the 1990’s. Palestinians were promised that the status of the capital, Jerusalem, was part of negotiations that would ultimately give them sovereignty.

With the exception of Russia, which recently recognized West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, no country acknowledges Israel’s claim to sovereignty over Jerusalem. No country has an embassy in Jerusalem.

That U.S. commitment on Jerusalem was circulated on social media in the hours after Trump and Abbas’ call by spokesperson for the PLO, Xavier Abu-Eid, who posted a copy of a 1991 letter from James Baker that has guided American policy for nearly three-decades in brokering Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

“The United States understands how much importance Palestinians attach to the question of east Jerusalem,” Baker wrote, “Thus, we want to assure you that nothing Palestinians do in choosing their delegation members in this phase of the process will affect their claim to east Jerusalem, or be prejudicial or precedential to the outcome of negotiations. It remains the firm position of the United States that Jerusalem must never again be a divided city and that its final status should be decided by negotiations.”

Baker also said in no uncertain terms that the U.S. does “not recognize Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem” and encouraged “all sides to avoid unilateral acts that would exacerbate local tensions or make negotiations more difficult or preempt their final outcome.”

Today in Washington State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert declined to state Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s position on moving the embassy and skirted questions about a travel warning issued by the U.S. Consul-General in Jerusalem barring government employees from visiting Jerusalem’s Old City and the West Bank, in anticipation of “widespread calls for demonstrations.”

Many journalists posited that Trump will not move the embassy, and instead through a statement will recognize it as Israel’s capital. Although, no sources are on the record to confirm this.

On MSNBC, White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski reported that Trump will sign the latest waiver, meaning that the U.S. Embassy will stay in Tel Aviv for another six months, but that he will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announce his intention to move the embassy there ultimately. Bloomberg is reporting the same.

Aaron David Miller described such an outcome as disastrous: it will “set the stage perhaps for violence” and undermine the U.S. role as a broker in a peace process that is “comatose” anyway.

“Jerusalem is a tinderbox waiting for a match,” Miller said. The President could seek to balance his announcement by saying that the U.S. intends to recognize a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, but “that would drive the Israelis crazy” and antagonize the political forces Trump is seeking to placate with the announcement.

Martin Indyk postulated that Trump’s strategy is to: “sign waiver for last time; order relocation of embassy in next 6 months; recognize J’m as Israel’s capital; and recognize Pal aspiration to have east J’m as their capital, to be decided in negotiations.”

The liberal Zionist group J Street issued an alarmed statement saying the reported plan is a “profound mistake” that reverses longstanding U.S. policy, and only 20 percent of US Jews support the idea.
 

The effect of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem or of declaring that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital prior to a negotiated agreement will be to anger key Arab allies, foment regional instability and undermine nascent US diplomatic efforts to resolve the larger conflict.

Americans for Peace Now has called the plan “pyromaniacal” and a gift to those looking “to blow up a peace process before it begins.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition is excited by the news.

Obama’s ambassador to Israel approved the plan but said Trump should use the shift to “make clear the context in which our (still-delayed, but impending) embassy move will take place: US determination to achieve a conflict-ending two-state solution in which both parties have capitals in a unified city of Jerusalem.”

Allison Deger is the Assistant Editor of Mondoweiss.net. Follow her on twitter at @allissoncd.

Courtesy: Mondoweiss.net
 

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Rima Khalaf, former head of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. (Photo: ESCWA)

“The secretary-general demanded yesterday that I withdraw the report, and I refused,”Khalaf told reporters at a press conference in Beirut today, according to the Middle East Eye.

“It was expected that Israel and its allies would put enormous pressure on the United Nations secretary general to renounce the report,” she also said, according to Reuters. Then Khalaf stated that the United Nations “had scrubbed the report from its website.”

While the webpage for the report, titled “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” was removed, the link to the executive summary of the report is still active on the UN website here.
Here is the full report:

Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid by Mondoweiss on Scribd

Earlier in the week Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, released a statement calling for ESCWA to retract the report.

“The United Nations Secretariat was right to distance itself from this report, but it must go further and withdraw the report altogether,” Haley said, further charging the report co-author and former United Nations Special Rapporteur Richard Falk is, “a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories, including about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”

Officials in Israel made far-reaching allegations against the report and its authors, charging anti-Semitism and making comparisons to Nazi propagandists.

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon told Mondoweiss (and posted on social media): “#UN #ESCWA has issued today a ” Der Stürmer”like report, NOT endorsed by @UNSG . Friendly advice- dont read it without anti nausea pills….,” equating the UN report to the Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer.

Yair Lapid, leader of Israel’s center-right Yesh Atid party, said the UN report “is dripping with hate and anti-Semitism,” according to the Israeli daily Israel Hayom. Lapid went on:
 

“Instead of defending freedom, democracy and liberal values, the U.N. and its agencies are assisting terrorist organizations. Does it make any sense to anyone that the U.N., which includes member states Syria and Sudan, should preach to Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, which upholds minority rights and provides humanitarian assistance to its enemies? The U.S. and Europe need to make it very clear that they will withhold support for the U.N. and its agencies as long as they continue to incite against Israel.”
 

Meanwhile, Palestinians applauded Khalaf for resigning rather than walking back her group’s report. The General Coordinator of the Palestinian BDS National Committee Mahmoud Nawajaa said in a statement today:
 

“Palestinians are deeply grateful to ESCWA’s director, Dr. Rima Khalaf, who preferred to resign in dignity than to surrender her principles to US-Israeli bullying. At our darkest moment of Israel’s escalating repression, including of nonviolent human rights defenders, ongoing theft of Palestinian land, and worsening apartheid policies, Palestinians are hopeful that this groundbreaking report heralds the approaching dawn of a new era where Israel’s regime of injustice will be held accountable through sanctions and other measures, as was done against apartheid South Africa.”
 

The controversy over the report comes amid the Trump administration’s decision this week to reduce U.S. commitments to fund UN agencies. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter to non-governmental organizations working with the UN’s Human Rights Council regarding the possibility of the U.S. leaving the body. Mark Toner, acting spokesperson for the State Department, was asked about the letter on Wednesday and said he was “not predicting we’re going to walk away from the council. What I will say is that we’re going to hold the council and its members more accountable and urge greater accountability and transparency.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition, a pro-Israel organization on the right, is circulating a petition to support the president over social media in his “standing up to” the United Nations.

This article was first published on mondoweiss.net

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