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The Palestinian Authority leadership sounded alarm over U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments endorsing a one-state solution during his meeting Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying it would officially be an “apartheid” state against the Palestinian people.
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Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO, Secretary-General Saeb Erekat said the two-state solution was already a hard-reached compromise as a basis for peaceful conflict resolution.
“(The two-state solution) represents a painful and historic Palestinian compromise of recognizing Israel over 78 percent of historic Palestine,” he said. “Today, almost 6 million Palestinians live under Israeli control in all of historic Palestine, while almost 6 million Palestinians live in exile.”
Erekat added that what Netanyahu and his government officials want to achieve is “one state and two systems, apartheid.”
However, an “alternative to two sovereign and democratic states on the 1967 border is one single secular and democratic state with equal rights for everyone, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, on all of historic Palestine,” he argued.
Trump met Netanyahu at the White House and the two reiterated their mutual support for one another. During a joint press conference, both leaders spoke of facilitating peace, but heavily criticized Palestine and Iran.
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Trump said the U.S. will be working on peace “very, very diligently," but "it is the parties themselves who must directly negotiate such an agreement,” later saying that both sides would need to make sacrifices to achieve peace.
The president, who referred to Netanyahu as “Bibi” throughout the press conference, said there is an “unbreakable bond” between the two countries. Trump said that he is open to both a one or two-state solution to peace, saying that he would be happy with whatever deal both sides are happy with.
Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s strong relationship with the U.S. and explained that his position on peace was the same as it has been for many years. He blamed Palestinians for stifling peace efforts and other Arab nations, as well as Iran, for targeting Israel. Trump said that he will "prevent Iran from ever developing, I mean ever, a nuclear weapon."
Trump, almost verbatim to Netanyahu, said that Palestine was teaching its citizens from a young age to hate Israel and advocate its destruction.
When speaking of controversial Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, Trump casually turned to Netanyahu and said, “I would like to see you hold back on settlements for a little bit. We’ll work something out.” The prime minister said that he was not interested in labels but rather substance.
Netanyahu and former President Barack Obama had an antagonistic relationship, despite ongoing U.S. support for Israel, and Netanyahu will be hoping for a clean slate with Trump. In December, the Obama administration abstained from a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an end to illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land, angering Netanyahu.
During his election campaign, Trump — like the majority of Republicans — was pro-Israeli. Shortly after his victory, Trump said regarding a peace deal between the two sides that, “as a dealmaker, I’d like to do … the deal that can’t be made. And do it for humanity’s sake.”
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But a senior White House official said Tuesday that Trump would not try to “dictate a solution” and that peace did not necessarily involve Palestinian statehood. “Peace is the goal, whether it comes in the form of a two-state solution, if that's what the parties want, or something else. If that's what the parties want, we're going to help them.”
The official, speaking to reporters on a condition of anonymity, said the leaders are also expected to focus on Iran. In January, Netanyahu said he would pressure Trump to renew sanctions against Iran. Trump has called the deal struck under Obama to curtail its nuclear program “the worst deal ever negotiated.”
Trump previously proposed to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from the state's capital, Tel Aviv, to occupied Jerusalem, a call which many viewed as a provocation against the people of Palestine and a "war crime."
Trump nominated David Friedman as his ambassador to Israel, a controversial figure who has defended illegal Israeli moves to expand the building of new housing settlements and a hard-right figure who has called liberal Jewish-Americans “worse than kapos,” a reference to the Jews who collaborated with the Nazis in World War II-era concentration camps.
Friedman has also rejected the two-state solution, which has long been a staple of U.S. foreign policy.
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