Abbas Calls US Ambassador to Israel is a 'Son of a Dog'

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council .

Ramallah, MINA – The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has labelled the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a “son of a dog” during a scathing attack on Donald Trump’s policies, The Guardian reported.

“The US ambassador in Tel Aviv is a settler and a son of a dog,” Abbas said in comments to Palestinian leaders in Ramallah on Monday.

Relations between Abbas’s government and President Trump’s US administration have broken down since the White House recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December.

The Palestinians see the disputed city as the capital of their future state.

Friedman, who was Trump’s personal lawyer before being appointed last year, is a longstanding supporter of settlement building in the occupied West Bank, considered illegal under international law.

In response to Abbas, Friedman, who is Jewish, told a conference that Abbas’s comments could have antisemitic connotations.

“His response was to refer to me as ‘son of a dog’. Is that antisemitism or political discourse? I leave that up to you,” he said, according to a US embassy spokeswoman.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Trump’s decision to move the embassy had caused Abbas to “lose it”.

“For the first time in decades, the US administration has stopped spoiling the Palestinian leaders and tells them: enough is enough,” Netanyahu said on Twitter. “Apparently the shock of the truth has caused them to lose it.”

Abbas’s comments appeared to be in response to a tweet by Friedman earlier on Monday.

In it he referred to an attack in the West Bank as “in the north”, raising questions over whether he views it as part of Israeli territory, and accused Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA) of failing to condemn it.(T/RE1/RS5)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)