Lukewarm response to Trump peace plan
US President Donald Trump has vowed to present a “very fair” Middle East peace plan by the end of 2018 and endorsed a two-state solution, apparently confident that the Palestinians would return to talks.
Holding talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York, Trump said it was a dream of his to bring about a peaceful solution to a conflict that has eluded several of his predecessors.
Trump’s endorsement of the goal of a Palestinian state, long the focus of US peace efforts before he came into office, was decidedly lukewarm – and he even slightly backtracked from it later in the day.
But it still sparked concern among some Israeli right-wing politicians who hoped Trump would bury the idea of Palestinian statehood, while Palestinian officials dismissed his comments as empty talk.
When meeting Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Trump backed a two-state solution since “that’s what I think works best, that’s my feeling”.
Later at a media briefing, he said the same, but also reiterated his earlier position.
“If the Israelis and the Palestinians want one state, that’s OK with me,” he said.
“If they want two states, that’s OK with me.”
Netanyahu told Israeli journalists after his meeting with Trump he had not been surprised by his endorsement of two states, which many hoped the Oslo accords of the 1990s could achieve.
Twentyfive years after the first of those accords, that goal seems far out of reach for now.
Peace efforts have been at a standstill since a US-led push collapsed in 2014.
Netanyahu reiterated his stance that Israel must retain security control under any deal with the Palestinians.
His position has evolved somewhat since a landmark speech he gave in 2009 in which he spoke specifically about a future demilitarised Palestinian state.
In recent years, he has said he wants the Palestinians to govern themselves without specifying whether that means full statehood or some lesser form of autonomy.
“It is important to set what is inadmissible to us – Israel will not relinquish security control west of Jordan,” he said on Wednesday, according to an Israeli newspaper.
“This will not happen so long as I am prime minister and I think the Americans understand that.”
One of his main rivals, education minister Naftali Bennett of the far-right Jewish Home, said as long as his party was in government “there will not be a Palestinian state, which would be a disaster for Israel”.
Others issued similar comments, while regional co-operation minister Tzachi Hanegbi, of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said “there will not be a state in the classic sense”.
Palestinian leaders accuse Trump’s administration of blatant bias in favour of Israel and of seeking to blackmail them into accepting his terms.
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki said in New York that Abbas’s team had met more than 40 times with Trump’s envoys only “to discover they have opted to open that war against the Palestinians to inflict the most damage”.
Trump’s son-in-law and aide Jared Kushner is part of a team working on what Trump has called the “ultimate deal” – Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The team’s efforts have been met with derision from the Palestinians, who note that the Israelis have so far not been asked publicly for any concessions in return for the Jerusalem recognition and other moves they favour.
“Jared, who’s so involved, he loves Israel,but he’s also going to be very fair with the Palestinians,” Trump told the media conference on Wednesday.