Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said today at a ceremony in Ramallah that the Trump administration's Israeli-Palestinian peace plan "will go to hell."
Why it matters: The White House peace team, led by Trump's senior adviser Jared Kushner, is planning to launch the economic part of the peace plan at a conference in Bahrain less than a month from now. Abbas's harsh language against the peace plan and his lobbying against the Bahrain conference show the deep crisis in U.S.-Palestinian relations, which are probably broken beyond repair as long as Trump or Abbas are in office.
Abbas said today that whoever wants to solve the Palestinian issue needs to start with solving the political aspect of it, "and not try to sell illusions of billions of dollars".
"The deal of the century [The Trump peace plan] or the deal of disgrace will go to hell and the economic project they are working on for next month [The Bahrain conference] will also go to hell ... we said we are not going to accept this meeting and its results because they are selling us illusions that will lead to nothing."
