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Monday 24 April 2017 - 09:12

Palestinian Officials Travel to US ahead of Abbas-Trump Meeting

Story Code : 630266
Palestinian Officials Travel to US ahead of Abbas-Trump Meeting
Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary General and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat will reportedly lead the delegation in a series of high-level meeting with administration officials, including Trump’s son-in-law adviser Jared Kushner and Middle East peace envoy Jason Greenblatt.
 
Palestinian intelligence chief Majed Faraj and Abbass’s senior economic adviser, Muhammed Mustasfa, will also be part of the delegation.
 
"They will use the visit to reaffirm the commitment of both the United States and Palestinian leadership to pursuing and ultimately concluding a conflict-ending settlement between the Palestinians and Israel,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a briefing.
 
Israel, emboldened by Trump's swearing-in, has significantly increased building illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian territories and Mahmoud Abbas hopes that he could urge Trump to pressure regime's hardliner Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlement.
 
Encouraged by the pro-Israeli rhetoric of the Trump administration, the Tel Aviv regime has announced thousands new permits for Israeli settlement units in the occupied Palestinian territories only weeks after the American real estate election as US president.
 
During Obama's presidency, despite Washington’s repeated assertions that Israel’s settlements in Palestine are both illegal and a barrier to peace, there was marked increase in construction of new illegal Zionist settlements.
 
According to a report by the Associated Press last September, hawkish Netanyahu belligerently accelerated illegal settlement construction during the Obama presidency that matched, and even exceeded, the amount of building that took place under his predecessors during the Bush years.
 
After Trump occupied the White House, Tel Aviv regime intensified grabbing Palestinian territories and building illegal settlements.
 
Over 6,000 new settlement homes have been announced in less than 20 days after Trump’s inauguration on January 20th. Now comparing this to 13,000 settlements built during two Obama's administration, then Trump's controversial administration is on course to set an unprecedented record in construction of illegal Israeli settlements. In first two weeks of Trumps administration the Israeli regime has approved nearly half the number of settlements built in two consecutive Obama terms.
 
As if this was not enough, the Israeli regime’s so-called parliament approved a controversial bill to retroactively “legalize” illegal Zionist outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land, thus sparking another confrontation with the international community. At this rate, the whole of Palestine will be grabbed if Trump is to last two terms. This is especially so considering the strong Jewish-Zionist connections in Trump’s family and administration.
 
Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Trump’s West Asia team
 
Donald Trump's older daughter Ivanka Trump, converted to Judaism before marrying her Jewish husband Jared Kushner in 2009. Trump named son-in-law Kushner a senior adviser on the West Asia region. Well here comes the shocker, Kushner is a friend of Netanyahu, and he personally introduced the hawkish Israeli premier to Trump. Sources say he was the man behind Trump’s outbursts following the Obama-approved US abstention on the UN Security Council vote on illegal Israeli settlements. He is also reportedly behind the provocative Trump promise to shift the US embassy to Al-Quds (Jerusalem). Another worrying person in Trump’s West Asia policy team is David Friedman who is expected to be confirmed as the US ambassador to Tel Aviv. Friedman is not your ‘normal’ diplomat, he is a rabid pro-settler lawyer with hardline stances against Palestine, opposes the so-called the two-state solution and is strong advocate of an undivided Al-Quds as Israeli regime’s capital.
 
These radical ultra-orthodox Zionist Jews in Trump’s cabinet imply that negotiations with the Israeli regime are not an option for Palestine and the only way to liberate their territories is armed resistance until victory is fully attained and Palestinians return to their grabbed ancestral land.
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