By Moustafa Haboosh

GAZA CITY, Palestine

The so-called “deal of the century” – a U.S.-backchannel plan to reach peace settlement between the Palestinians and Israel – targets the Arab and Muslim worlds, a Hamas leader said Wednesday.

“The Palestinian cause has encountered its toughest challenges in 2018,” Khalil al-Hayya told a ceremony held by the Police Department in Gaza City.

He said the “deal of the century” does not only target the Palestinian cause but also the Arab and Islamic worlds.

Al-Hayya said the U.S. and Israel began to normalize relations with Arab and Islamic states after “they found that the Palestinians stood a stumbling block against the ‘deal of the century’”.

The Hamas leader described the process of normalizing ties between Israel and Arab and Islamic states as “unprecedented".

“Normalization was a setback and a stab in the back of the Palestinians,” he said.

The terms of Washington's peace plan remain vague. But according to recent speculations, Palestinian refugees will be asked to concede their right to return to historical Palestine, from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the new state of Israel.