Angry Palestinians face dilemma in responding to Trump plan

AL-KASSARAT, West Bank (AP) — The Palestinians have furiously rejected President Donald Trump's plan to end the Mideast conflict, which would grant them limited autonomy in parts of the Middle East, while allowing Israel to annex its West Bank settlements and keep nearly all of east Jerusalem.

But they have few realistic options to prevent its implementation as Israel plows ahead with plans to unilaterally annex territory.

The Western-backed Palestinian leadership will come under mounting pressure from ordinary Palestinians and its rivals in the Islamic militant group Hamas to cut off security ties with Israel and the United States or even dismantle the increasingly unpopular Palestinian Authority.

But such drastic moves would risk further undermining the international consensus around solving the conflict, which largely supports the Palestinians' goal of an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

President Mahmoud Abbas, who is traveling to Cairo this week for meetings at the Arab League, appears determined to shore up international support.

Small protests have been held in the West Bank and Gaza, but most Palestinians appear to have largely shrugged off the plan. Few Palestinians place any stock in American peace plans after decades of failed initiatives, and little is expected to change on the ground as Israel extends sovereignty over settlements it has long treated as an integral part of its territory.

“Nothing will change,” said Mahmoud Abu Anwar, a vegetable vendor in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The Israelis “are building on our land and they will keep building, with or without an American plan. ... But we will remain here, no matter what they do to us."

Over the long term,...