Official: Abbas ‘Losing It’ With Speech Cursing Trump

Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas has “officially lost it,” a senior government official traveling with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was quoted as saying in response to the speech Abbas made at a Palestinian policy conference Sunday night. “These are the words of a man who has nothing to lose,” the official was quoted by Channel 20 as saying, in response to a speech in which Abbas directly attacked U.S. President Donald Trump.

Among other things, Abbas laid a traditional Arab curse on Trump, although the official transcript of the speech published by the PA eliminates that comment.

In the speech, Abbas lashed out at the Americans and Europeans “for bringing the Jews here from Europe in order to protect Europe’s interests in the region. They asked Holland, which had the biggest sailing fleet in the world, to bring the Jews here.” Regarding the Balfour Declaration, Abbas said that “Israel is a colonial project that has nothing to do with the Jews.”

Regarding President Trump, Abbas said that he had seen the president post on social media that the U.S. would no longer fund the Palestinian Authority “because we refuse to negotiate. May your household be destroyed. When did you ask me to negotiate? On the phone? In person? We will no longer accept deals offered by the United States, and we will no longer accept them as a broker of a deal after the crime they committed” in announcing that the U.S. now recognizes Yerushalayim as Israel’s capital. “We will not agree to be an ‘authority’ without authority.

“Jerusalem was taken off the table in a social media post,” Abbas said. “Despite everything we will remain here. We are not leaving our villages. This is our land. We do not take instructions from anyone. We tell Trump: We will not accept your plans. The ‘deal of the century’ you promised has turned into the slap in the face of the century.” As far as U.S. Ambassador David Friedman goes, Abbas categorically refuses to meet him. “I will not receive him, not here in Ramallah, not in Amman, not in Washington.”

Commenting on the speech, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said that “this is the ‘destruction speech’ of Abbas, a sure sign that he has lost his way and his sense. He has lost the support of the moderate Arab world, and has given up on negotiations. Abbas enjoys the financial support of the Americans, so all of these comments by him are very puzzling. He does not understand that there is no alternative to the United States – not just for him but for Israel as well, and for the entire moderate world.”

Abbas’s attitude, which Liberman called “childish,” is also “very irresponsible. Something is happening to him, and we have to ask, is he still a partner for peace? Will we really be able to keep a relationship with him that will allow coexistence of Jews and Arabs in Yehudah and Shomron?”