Islamists' Response to Peace Plan by Bassam Tawil • February 18, 2020 at 5:00 am Facebook Twitter WhatsApp Telegram Send Print When Hizb-ut-Tahrir says that negotiations and a peace process with Israel are acts of treason, their words are pointed straight at Abbas and the PA leadership. When Hizb-ut-Tahrir says it wants Muslim armies to liberate all of Palestine, the organization is actually calling on Muslims to march on Israel, kill Jews and destroy the state. While the ideology of Hizb-ut-Tahrir might sound inhospitable, it is shared by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and several other Palestinian terror groups -- particularly regarding the goal of eliminating Israel. By continuing to incite their people against Israel and the US... Abbas... and other PA officials are driving more Palestinians into the open, welcoming arms of Hizb-ut-Tahrir as well as Iran's proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. By allowing thousands of Islamists to call for the destruction of Israel on the streets of West Bank cities, PA leaders are digging their own graves: The same people they are inciting against Israel and the US will kill these leaders not only for being affiliated with Israelis and Americans but for being too "moderate." Finally, by making, as they usually do, contradictory claims to their own people, they are losing, among the Palestinians, the little credibility they have left. At an emergency meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on February 1, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (center) declared that "there will be no relations with Israel and the US, including on security cooperation." (Photo by Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images) The Palestinian Authority, after rejecting US President Donald Trump's recently unveiled plan for Mideast peace, "Peace to Prosperity," as a "conspiracy" against Palestinians, is now trying to persuade the Israeli public that it is "still" interested in achieving peace with Israel. Earlier this month, PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he would cut all ties with Israel and the US, including security coordination, to protest the Trump plan, which he denounced as the "slap of the century." "We are informing you," Abbas told Arab foreign ministers during an emergency meeting in Cairo, "that there will be no relations with Israel and the US, including on security cooperation." Abbas has been making similar threats for the past three years -- probably the reason Palestinians have long stopped taking his threats seriously. Continue Reading Article

2020-02-18T10:58:22.000Z via Facebook