The Palestinian leadership has announced its strong rejection and condemnation of the trilateral agreement between Israel, the UAE and the United States, said Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
"The Palestinian leadership declares its strong rejection and condemnation of the trilateral agreement to normalize relations between Israel and the UAE with the mediation of the United States," a statement issued by an official representative of Abbas reads.
"The Palestinian leadership sees this step as an attempt to undermine the Arab peace initiative and the Arab League's decisions, this step is also an aggression against the Palestinian people," the official representative of the Palestinian President said in a statement.
The Palestinian leadership emphasizes that neither the UAE nor any other party has the right to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian leadership also confirms that the only legitimate representative of the Palestinians is the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The Palestinian leadership called for an emergency meeting of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to reject the agreement.
The representative of Palestine in the Arab League, Muhannad al-Akluk, said that the normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel contradicts all the decisions of the Arab League and only postpones the occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel, but does not cancel it.
"The Arab peace initiative (adopted in 2002-ed. TASS) provides for the establishment of relations between Arab countries and Israel, but only after the end of the occupation of the occupied Palestinian lands in 1967, the creation of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem and a just solution to the refugee problem, - said the Palestinian diplomat. "The statement on the normalization of relations between the UAE and Israel contradicts all the decisions of the Arab League adopted at the level of foreign Ministers and during summits."
"And this is what we have come to: instead of prescribing the complete end of the occupation, they [the UAE and Israel] agree on normalization in exchange for only delaying the annexation," the diplomat said. "It turns out that the trilateral agreement comes into complete contradiction with the official position of the Arabs."
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced on his Twitter page that Israel and the UAE have reached agreements on the full normalization of bilateral relations. This also follows from the joint statement of the two countries. The agreements, in particular, involve suspending Israel's decision to extend its sovereignty to Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which is stipulated in the American plan for the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Earlier it was reported that the delegations of Israel and the UAE were going to meet in the coming weeks to conclude a number of bilateral agreements, including on investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, health, culture, environment, the mutual establishment of embassies, as well as in other areas.
At the moment, only Egypt and Jordan have established diplomatic relations with Israel and operate embassies among the Arab States. In recent years, information has repeatedly appeared in the media about the rapprochement between Israel and the UAE and the contacts between the two countries. The UAE, despite the absence of a peace treaty with the Jewish state, has actively developed commercial relations with Israel in recent years.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Jolyne D / Pixabay
Based on materials from RIA Novosti, TASS