Palestinians slam Kushner over violence remarks

Occupied Jerusalem - Kushner had blamed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for the latest violence.

The Palestinians on Friday rejected US allegations of incitement after a day of clashes and attacks left three Palestinians dead, including a member of the security forces, and wounded more than a dozen Israeli soldiers.
They instead linked the violence to President Donald Trump's Mideast initiative, which heavily favours Israel on all the most contentious issues of the conflict and would allow it to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank.
"Those who introduce plans for annexation and apartheid and the legalisation of occupation and settlements are the ones who bear full responsibility for deepening the cycle of violence and extremism," senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said in a statement.
He was responding to remarks delivered the day before by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and the architect of the Mideast blueprint, who had blamed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for the latest violence.
"Don't call for days of rage and encourage (your) people to pursue violence if they're not getting what they want," Kushner said on Thursday after briefing the UN Security Council on the plan.
He said Abbas "was surprised with how good the plan was for the Palestinian people, but he locked himself into a position" by rejecting it before it came out.
Erekat said Abbas will soon bring his own plan to the Security Council, one that he said is rooted in international law and based on a two-state solution along the 1967 lines.

• MENA