Strategic Studies Center Affirms Egypt's Undoubted Support for Palestine

Egypt, undoubtedly, will always support Palestine and the Palestinian people and this support will remain until Palestinians gain their rights, according to Major-General Mohamed Ibrahim, a member of the advisory board of the Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies (ECSS).

Ibrahim told the Egyptian state-owned news agency, MENA, that the Palestinians have the right to take the final decision and Egypt will never exercise any forms of pressure. 

“Dialogue channels between Egypt and the leadership of Palestine is open all the time and both sides believe in each others. Palestinians do believe that Egypt supports the Palestinian national interests,” Ibrahim said on Wednesday. 

He lauded the Egyptian foreign ministry’s statement on the US Middle East peace plan released on Tuesday, noting that “the statement is balanced and represents the Egyptian stance toward the Palestinian issue.”

“Studying the US peace plan carefully is necessary.”

Ibrahim stressed that freezing negotiations help the Israelis and gives them a chance to take procedures that contribute to increasing the number of settlers and building more settlements. 

“Is refusing the US peace plan the correct reaction to take?” he wondered. 

He manifested that there is an opportunity as the peace process can be updated with full respect to the Palestinian rights and the right to establish an independent Palestinian State.

At a White House event on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump proposed creating a Palestinian state but demilitarised and with borders drawn to meet Israeli security needs, while granting U.S. recognition of Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land and of Jerusalem as Israel's inpisible capital.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will speak at the United Nations' Security Council in two weeks on the U.S. peace plan, said on Wednesday Palestinian envoy to the UN, Riyad Mansour.

Mansour said he hoped the Security Council, at the same meeting that Abbas would address, would vote on a draft resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan unveiled by Trump on Tuesday.