RAMALLAH, Wednesday, March 4, 2020 (WAFA) – Palestinians today accused top US officials of opposing values of justice and equality.
Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said in a statement that remarks by US Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the US ambassador to Israel, David Freidman, at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in the US “confirm their opposition to a rules-based world order as well as their support for annexation, apartheid, settlements, occupation and oppression.”
He said,” Peace is about justice and equality, values they oppose.”
The three top officials bragged at the conference about the favorable position of US President, Donald Trump, toward Israel and what he has done for it, such as recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, among other crucial things, prompting the Palestinian Foreign Ministry to describe the officials as more right-wing than Israelis.
“Who listened to Pompeo, the Secretary of State of the United States of America, speaking to AIPAC will get confused since what will come to mind first is that he is listening to one of the leaders of the extreme right wing in Israel,” said the Foreign Ministry in a statement critical of the US officials.
The Ministry strongly condemned Pompeo’s remarks saying it considers them “an adaptation of the terms of the deal of the century, an ideological embrace of Israel, its occupation and settlement of the Palestinian land, and an official US recognition of the coup against international law and relevant United Nations resolutions.”
It said his remarks undermine any chance for achieving peace based on the two-state solution and on international terms of reference, warning that world silence to such statements shows not only “international impotence, but a form of complicity in marginalizing the role of the United Nations and disrupting the foundations of the current international order with the aim of reshaping and reconstructing it in accordance with the law of the jungle and the arrogance of power.”
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