Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Trump hopeful on Israeli-Palestinian deal
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump expressed confidence during a meeting at the White House on Wednesday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he can help the Israelis and the Palestinians negotiate a peace agreement, referring to a goal that has long eluded previous U.S. leaders and declaring, “We will get this done.”
But despite expressing optimism in the face of the long odds and an increasingly fraught relationship between the two Middle East players, Trump also warned that “there can be no lasting peace unless the Palestinian leaders speak in a unified voice” and renounce violence and hate — referring to the split between the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, and the militant Hamas group, which controls the Gaza Strip.
Trump also cast the United States in a more intermediary role.
“I’m committed to working with Israel and the Palestinians to reach an agreement, but any agreement cannot be imposed by the United States or any other nation,” he said. “The Palestinians and Israelis must work together to reach an agreement that allows both peoples to live, worship and thrive and prosper in peace. And I will do whatever is necessary to facilitate the agreement, to mediate, to arbitrate anything they’d like to do, but I would be a mediator or an arbitrator or a facilitator, and we will get this done.”
Abbas, for his part, nodded to the president’s background as a businessman, saying he respected Trump’s “great negotiating ability,” and called for a two-state solution.
“Our strategic option, our strategic choice, is to bring about peace based on the vision of the two-state, a Palestinian state, with its capital in east Jerusalem, that lives in peace and stability with the state of Israel, based on the borders of 1967,” Abbas said.
Abbas and a small entourage arrived outside the West Wing in a black limousine shortly before noon and were greeted by Trump. The Palestinian leader and his advisers are weighing efforts to restart peace negotiations with Israel with the aim of securing Palestinian borders, a capital and a state.
“It is a great honor to have the president with us,” Trump said after taking Abbas into the Oval Office.
Trump, who in February met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, has called a possible Palestinian-Israeli accord “the toughest deal in the world” but one he is determined to try to broker. Some analysts are skeptical, however, that Trump will succeed in an arena where his predecessors have fallen short.
“Every president, when they come into office, thinks they can bring about an Israel-Palestinian deal,” said James Gelvin, professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of California at Los Angeles. “Everyone fails, and then they turn their attention to issues that are more pressing. This is probably going to be the same sort of thing.”
During Netanyahu’s White House visit in February, Trump both flattered and pressured him when the two fielded questions from journalists. During that visit Trump also made headlines by saying he “could live with” either a separate Palestinian state or a single state as a peaceful outcome.
“I want the one that both parties want,” Trump said.
Meanwhile Wednesday, a senior official in Abbas’ West Bank-based government said it would stop paying for electricity in the power-starved Gaza Strip and “dry up” the flow of funds to the territory’s Hamas rulers.
Hamas accused the Abbas government of irresponsible behavior and warned that the announced cuts would be disastrous for Gaza’s 2 million residents. Abbas and Hamas have led rival governments since the Islamic militant group seized Gaza in 2007, driving out forces loyal to the Western-backed Palestinian president. After several failed reconciliation attempts, Abbas recently said he would pressure Hamas financially to force it to cede ground.
Hussein al-Sheikh, head of the Civil Affairs Department in the West Bank, said Abbas’ government would stop paying for the electricity Israel sends to Gaza, worth at least $11 million a month. Al-Sheikh said Hamas profits because it collects electricity payments from Gaza residents.