Greenblatt: Time to demand more from PA
The United States purposely downgraded its participation in a recent major meeting of donors to the Palestinian Authority at the United Nations to get across a message that the “conventional approach” to peace will not work, US special envoy Jason Greenblatt told The Jerusalem Post.
“We limited our participation to working level observers only,” Greenblatt said on Wednesday. “We specifically chose not to speak at the event, or participate at a higher level, because we have previously made our position very clear on this. It’s time for people to recognize that the conventional approach has brought us no closer to a comprehensive peace agreement and the trajectory of Palestinian lives continues downward. It’s high time to demand more of the Palestinian leaders.”
The decision not to speak last week at the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC), which has operated for the last 25 years, is the latest action by the Trump administration against traditional venues that help provide financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority.
As part of its peace plan known as the “Deal of the Century,” the administration plans to create new funding venues for the Palestinians, the blueprint for which was unveiled at a Bahrain conference in June. But action on the plan is dependent on success with the political part of the peace process, which has yet to be published.
The US was previously one of the largest donors to the Palestinians and the PA, providing upward of half-a-billion dollars a year through the United Nations and other venues, but it has slowly halted that funding over the last two years.
The high-level 15 member AHLC meeting, held in the spring in Brussels and in the fall in New York, is one of the bedrock pillars of international funding for the Palestinians. It has remained a neutral venue where Israelis, Palestinians and the United States interact, even when all other communication is frozen.
In the past, the meetings chaired by Norway have been attended by high-level officials such as Greenblatt, or secretaries of state such as John Kerry. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini often attends, and was one of the dignitaries who gathered in New York for the meeting on September 26.
Other attendees included representatives from Russia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations.
PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, who led the Palestinian delegation to the AHLC and held meetings with donors on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, said that the US absence was notably felt.
“We have conducted several meetings with donor countries, except the United States, which was absent from these meetings for the first time since 1994, in an attempt to dissolve this important international platform for the Palestinian issue,” Shtayyeh told the Palestinian cabinet in Ramallah on Monday.
During her speech to the AHLC, Mogherini spoke in defense of the group and said its work was critical to the preservation of a two-state solution, dismissing attempts to create a different funding track.
“We believe in the importance of this committee because we believe in the twostate perspective,” Mogherini said. “We also firmly believe that creating alternative or parallel structures should be avoided. The European Union has consistently been the largest donor to the Palestinian people. Our support is aimed at preserving and facilitating the prospect of a Palestinian state living alongside the State of Israel in peace and security.”
Still, Mogherini added, “should this prospect disappear or no longer appear achievable at all, the European Union and other donors would need to fundamentally review our support.”