Trump peace plan: Palestinians threaten to quit Oslo Accords

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian leaders Sunday threatened to withdraw from key provisions of the Oslo Accords, which define arrangements with Israel, if US President Donald Trump announces his Middle East peace plan next week.

Trump was scheduled to unveil the plan ahead of his meeting in Washington this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, who has called Trump "the greatest friend that Israel has ever had", said he hoped to "make history" in Washington this week.

But the Palestinian leadership was not invited to the talks and has rejected Trump´s initiative amid tensions with the US president over his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel´s undivided capital.

World powers have long agreed that Jerusalem´s fate should be settled through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told AFP that the Palestine Liberation Organisation reserved the right "to withdraw from the interim agreement" of the Oslo pact if Trump unveils his plan.

The Trump initiative will turn Israel´s "temporary occupation (of Palestinian territory) into a permanent occupation", Erekat said.

The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement, signed in Washington in 1995, sought to put into practice the first Oslo peace deal agreed two years earlier. Sometimes called Oslo II, the interim agreement set out the scope of Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza.

The interim pact was only supposed to last five years while a permanent agreement was finalised but it has tacitly been rolled over for more than two decades.