This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

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

“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.

The remarks prompted a swift rebuke from the White House, which described Abbas’s comments as “highly inappropriate.”

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.

In a statement, a top Trump aide, Jason Greenblatt, responded: “The time has come for President Abbas to choose between hateful rhetoric and concrete and practical efforts to improve the quality of life of his people and lead them to peace and prosperity.

“Notwithstanding his highly inappropriate insults against members of the Trump administration, the latest iteration being his insult of my good friend and colleague Ambassador Friedman, we are committed to the Palestinian people and to the changes that must be implemented for peaceful coexistence.”

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.

“Such brutality and no condemnation from the PA!” he tweeted, referring to a Friday car ramming that killed two soldiers and a Sunday stabbing in Jerusalem that left an Israeli dead, both carried out by Palestinians.



Israel has militarily occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967.



Abbas’s government has limited autonomy in parts of the West Bank, while the Jewish state annexed East Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community.

All countries currently have their embassies in Tel Aviv and view the future status of Jerusalem as a matter to be negotiated between the parties.

But in December Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and in May Friedman will become the first US ambassador in the city as the embassy is moved.

Separately during the speech, Abbas accused the rival Palestinian faction Hamas of a bomb attack targeting his prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, last week and threatened fresh sanctions against the Islamist movement.



Abbas had previously said Hamas was responsible as it controls security in the Palestinian enclave, but on Monday evening said it was “behind the attack”.

Hamdallah was uninjured in last Tuesday’s attack, which saw a roadside bomb explode as his convoy entered Gaza in what Palestinian officials have called an assassination attempt.

In the speech to Palestinian leaders in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Abbas said if the attack had succeeded it would have “opened the way for a bloody civil war”.

The Islamists and Abbas’s secular party Fatah have been at odds since 2007 when Hamas seized control of Gaza.

The two factions agreed a reconciliation agreement in October but it has collapsed.