Peace is joint effort, Trump says
He urges Israel and Palestinians to seize a rare opportunity and work together to reach ‘toughest’ deal.
JERUSALEM — President Trump on Monday took in the sweeping history of Jerusalem’s Old City on a visit in which he hopes to make some of his own, urging Israeli and Palestinian leaders to take strides toward peace that have eluded U.S. leaders for decades.
Starting the second leg of his eight-day foreign trip, Trump said he wants to make progress on what he has called the “ultimate deal,” a Middle East peace accord to end generations of conflict.
“We have before us a rare opportunity to bring security and stability and peace to this region and to its people,” Trump said in a ceremony after he landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. “But we can only get there working together. There is no other way.”
Trump has yet to offer a diplomatic initiative to restart negotiations, much less break the broader political impasse. Nor is it clear whether the Israelis or the Palestinians have the inclination or political capital to make substantial progress given their deep divisions.
Still, Trump raised the prospect of a peace deal during each of his three public appearances with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, though in the third he conceded it was perhaps the “toughest” deal to make.
Netanyahu leads a fragile coalition that depends on right-leaning parties who strongly resist the kinds of territorial or political concessions to Palestinians that a peace deal would probably require.
So he sought continually to steer the conversation toward Iran, a common foe for Israel and the Sunni Arab leaders whom Trump visited over the weekend in Saudi Arabia.
Trump’s call in a speech Sunday in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to isolate Iran to neutralize the threat it poses through proxy militant groups “not only helps security but also helps propel the possibility of reconciliation and peace between Israel and the Arab world,” Netanyahu said.
But the prime minister said Israel has not changed its own formulation for peace, one that Saudi Arabia and most other Arab states have rejected until now.
“The peace we seek is a genuine and a durable one in which the Jewish state is recognized, security remains in Israel’s hands and the conflict ends once and for all,” the Israeli leader said.
Trump will travel Tuesday to Bethlehem, in the West Bank, to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who visited the White House this month.
In his comments Monday, Trump said he had “found new reasons for hope” in his meetings with Arab leaders in Riyadh.
Echoing a White House argument, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the common threat of terrorism has united Sunni Arab nations, Israel and the United States in a way that did not exist in the past.
“I think [Trump] feels like there’s a moment in time here,” Tillerson told reporters traveling with the president on Air Force One.
“I think the president has indicated he’s willing to put his own personal efforts into this, if the Israelis and the Palestinian leadership are ready to be serious about engaging as well,” he said.