There can be no peace plan without a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told a group of Israeli journalists who visited Ramallah on Tuesday.
“As long as Jerusalem is off the table, then Trump is off the table as well,” Abu Rudeineh said.
He spoke at an event hosted by the Geneva Initiative.
Palestinians have presumed that Jerusalem is not part of the peace plan Trump intends to rollout later this spring, because of the US decision to relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to west Jerusalem last year.
No one, he said, knows what the final plan is. "But what we have seen from this plan is not acceptable at all. The issue of Jerusalem, the issue of settlements is not on the table.  Unless these issues are on the table, we will never accept the [plan],” he said.
Abu Rudeineh added, “the Americans are not working in an honest way. They are biased and this situation is not going to lead anywhere.”
Later in the day US special envoy Jason Greenblatt tweeted that he and the US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman “sincerely appreciate all of the interest in our peace efforts over the past [two years]. But, we're not going to reveal details of the plan ahead of time.”
He continued, “[Continued] speculation doesn't help anyone [and] harms the effort. We kindly suggest a stop to the guessing games.
“We’ve been working hard drafting what we believe is a fair, realistic [and] implementable plan. Fair agreements require compromises. Only the parties themselves can resolve the conflict. We believe our plan can help them do this," he said.