Palestine rejects US economic revival plan as ‘illusion’

Addressing an Arab League meeting in the Egyptian capital city of Cairo on Sunday, Bishara slammed a June 25-26 meeting Bahrain, during which Washington is set to unveil the economic aspect of US President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century.”

“We don’t need the Bahrain meeting to build our country, we need peace, and the sequence of (the plan) — economic revival followed by peace is unrealistic and an illusion,” he said.

The White House on Saturday unveiled the details of the economic portion of Trump’s deal, which would inject $50 billion into struggling economies in the Middle East over the next ten years.

Under the document, dubbed “Peace to Prosperity,” over half of the funds ($28 billion) would go toward the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the remaining to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, which have absorbed Palestinian refugees.

‘Lebanon won’t exchange Palestinian cause with US money’

Separately on Sunday, Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri emphasized that his country would not be lured by the American initiative to invest billions in the country in return for settling Palestinian refugees.

“Those who think that waving billions of dollars can lure Lebanon, which is under the weight of a suffocating economic crisis, into succumbing or bartering over its principles are mistaken,” he said in a statement.

At the forefront of Lebanon’s principles is the rejection of settling Palestinian refugees who must have the right of return to their homeland, he added.