Palestinians reject White House peace plan
MANAMA • Palestinians poured scorn on the Trump administration’s much-touted peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Wednesday, saying its framework for a trade and investment boost ignored their political aspirations for statehood.
Gulf states attending an international meeting in Bahrain, orchestrated by the plan’s architect, U.S. President Donald Trump’s sonin-law Jared Kushner, gave it qualified support.
But they also stressed that any peace settlement must be based on a two-state solution.
Kushner told reporters his team would release the plan’s political details, which remain secret, “when we’re ready,” adding: “We’ll see what happens.”
He said a peace deal would happen when both sides are ready to say “yes.” He acknowledged that they may never get there.
Neither the Israeli nor Palestinian governments are attending the meeting, which takes place amid a years-long stalemate in other international efforts to resolve a conflict that has lasted more than 70 years.
Senior Palestine Liberation Organization official Hanan Ashrawi, speaking in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said the Manama conference was “quite disingenuous.”
“It is totally divorced from reality. The elephant in the room is the (Israeli) occupation itself,” she told a news conference.
Several thousand Palestinians demonstrated in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and burned posters of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “No to the conference of treason, no to the conference of shame” read one banner.
The chief of the Islamist Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, criticized the plan as a ruse against the Palestinian people.
Netanyahu, a close Trump ally, has said Israel was open to the economic proposals.
But many Arab states, including Lebanon, stayed away from the event while others including Jordan and Egypt, the two Arab nations that have reached peace agreements with Israel, sent deputy ministers.
The Lebanese government and parliament both oppose the U.S. plan, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Wednesday.
Washington hopes the wealthy Gulf states will bankroll the plan, which expects donor nations and investors to contribute $50 billion to Palestinian and neighbouring Arab state economies.
Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said the kingdom would support whatever brings prosperity to the region, but that it was important that it was driven by the private sector.
Riyadh said on the eve of the conference that any peace deal should be based on a Saudi-led Arab peace initiative that calls for a Palestinian state drawn along borders which predate Israel’s capture of territory in the 1967 Middle East war.