The Palestinians appear to have withdrawn their request for a vote on a U.N. resolution condemning the Trump Mideast peace plan released last month, according to AFP, which cited on Monday unnamed diplomats who said there’s a lack of support for the measure.
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas still plans to address the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday about his rejection of the Mideast peace plan that was released on Jan. 28.
The diplomats told AFP that the Trump administration has heavily pressured those who are for it ahead of a scheduled vote on Tuesday.
Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat denied the report and said that the draft resolution, introduced last week by Indonesia and Tunisia, is still being discussed and will be voted on once there’s “a formula that represents our positions.”
The latest draft is much less aggressive in tone than the initial version, according to AFP, which recently obtained a copy, which no longer mentions the United States by name and uses less confrontational language than the original.
The initial draft of the resolution said that the Trump peace plan “breaches international law and the internationally endorsed terms of reference for the achievement of a just, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
In the updated version, according to the AFP, the draft states that the plan “departs from the internationally endorsed terms of reference and parameters for the achievement of a just, comprehensive and lasting solution to this conflict, as enshrined in the relevant United Nations resolutions.”
The revised draft also adds a condemnation of “all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation, incitement and destruction,” and dropped the call for an international conference on the Middle East “at the earliest possible date,” instead referring to a similar call made in a 2008 U.N. resolution.
The draft still condemns Israeli settlements in eastern Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria, and restates the importance of preserving the pre-1967 armistice lines.
