Palestine's Abbas announces a cut in all ties with Israel and US

The Palestinian Authority has cut all ties with the United States and Israel including security relations after rejecting a Middle East peace plan presented this week by U.S. President Donald Trump, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday.

At a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo, Abbas reiterated his "complete" rejection of Trump's peace plan, which calls for creating a demilitarized Palestinian state with borders drawn to meet Israeli security needs.

"We've informed the Israeli side...that there will be no relations at all with them and the United States including security ties," Abbas told the one-day extraordinary session to discuss Trump's plan.

Israeli officials had no immediate comment on his remarks.

Israel and the Palestinian Authority's security forces have long cooperated in policing areas of the occupied West Bank that are under Palestinian control. The PA also has intelligence cooperation agreements with the CIA, which continued even after the Palestinians began boycotting the Trump administration's peace efforts in 2017.

Abbas also said he had refused to discuss with Trump his plan by phone or to receive even a copy of it to study it.

"Trump asked that I speak to him by phone but I said no, and that he wants to send me a letter...but I refused it," he said.

The Trump plan, unveiled on Tuesday, also calls for U.S. recognition of Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land and of Jerusalem as Israel's indivisible capital.

Ambassadors from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman attended the Tuesday unveiling in Washington, in a tacit sign of support for the U.S. initiative.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Arab states that are close U.S. allies, said they appreciated President Trump's efforts and called for renewed negotiations without commenting on the plan's content.

Egypt urged in a statement Israelis and Palestinians to "carefully study" the plan. It said it favors a solution that restores all the "legitimate rights" of the Palestinian people through establishing an "independent and sovereign state on the occupied Palestinian territories."

The Egyptian statement did not mention the long-held Arab demand of east Jerusalem as a capital to the future Palestinian state, as Cairo usually has its statements related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Jordan, meanwhile, warned against any Israeli "annexation of Palestinian lands" and reaffirmed its commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines, which would include all the West Bank and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

Jordan and Egypt are the only two Arab countries that have peace treaties with Israel.