Abbas against US peace deal, Jerusalem is ours, historically and forever, US hospital in Gaza is suspect

Excerpt of speech by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas at the opening of the international conference on corruption organized by the PA. This is the print edition of the speech and summaries of parts of it. In the live speech Abbas went off manuscript several times –Ed.

Headline: "The [PA] president: We are going to elections after all of the organizations have agreed"

 “Regarding the US, we rejected the ‘deal of the century’ (i.e., US President Donald Trump’s as yet unpublished Middle East peace plan) from the beginning. This is Jerusalem. Who would sell it? Who would dare to say that Jerusalem is not ours? Jerusalem, the capital of the religions, is ours. From a historical perspective it is ours, and it will always be ours. No one can take it from us.We rejected the deal of the century and what is behind it. We were prepared to suffer the stopping of the money and aid, and the pressures.Imagine that they are establishing a hospital in Gaza on the pretext of aiding the residents of Gaza, and are denying aid to the hospitals in Jerusalem in order to cut Gaza off from the West Bank and complete the plan of the deal of the century. They say it is for humanitarian purposes. No, it is not for that. They said that it is not from the American administration but rather from NGOs. [We said that] we are against the hospital. We said, aren’t they Americans? If so, we are against the hospital. They came and said to us ‘Be careful not to incite against us, and if not we will do such and such,’ and we said that we will not be silent and we will act against it 24 hours [a day] and will raise our voices, and that it will not pass.”