Peace plan for Mideast on the way, says Trump
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said that he likely will release his long-awaited Mideast peace plan a little before separate meetings this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s main political rival.
Trump’s opponents are doubting the viability of any plan since there’s been little to no input from the Palestinians, who have rejected it before its release.
According to diplomats who have heard the plan described by White House
officials, the proposal will allow Israel to incorporate large Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank into Israel proper and give Israel security oversight of the eastern flank of the disputed territory while giving Palestinians greater political autonomy and a potential path to sovereignty.
The diplomats spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential exchanges.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly was not invited to the White House meeting.
Gantz was initially inclined to accept the joint invitation that Vice President Mike Pence extended to both him and Netanyahu two days ago in Jerusalem. Given the upcoming Israeli election on March 2, and the desire to present a united front to what is expected to be a favorable plan for Israel, Netanyahu said he suggested including Gantz at the summit.
But over the weekend, Gantz’s camp began leaking that he would likely decline, fearing that Netanyahu was using the meeting as an electoral ploy to upstage Gantz in Washington and refocus the campaign away from his indictment on corruption charges.
The two leaders remain deadlocked after two inconclusive elections in 2019 and are engaged in another heated campaign.
In weekend consultations with his advisers, however, Gantz appears to have found a compromise he could live with. He’ll meet with Trump privately on Monday and then return to Israel immediately to lead the parliamentary hearing on Tuesday seeking to reject Netanyahu’s plea for immunity from Israeli lawmakers.
“The peace plan devised by President Trump will go down in history as a meaningful landmark mapping the way for the different players in the Middle East to finally move forward toward an historic and regional agreement,” Gantz said in a live TV address. “These are fateful times, both for Israel’s border and character as well as its democratic fabric. Therefore, I have decided to accept the invitation extended to me by President Trump and meet with him in person this Monday as the leader of the largest party in Israel.”
“It’s entirely about politics,” Michael Koplow, policy director of the Israel Policy Forum, said about Tuesday’s meeting. “You simply can’t have a serious discussion about an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and only invite one side to come talk about it. This is more about the politics inside Israel and inside the U.S. than it is about any real efforts to get these two sides to an agreement.” Jared Kushner, a Trump adviser and the president’s son-inlaw, has been the architect for the plan for nearly three years. He’s tried to persuade academics, lawmakers, former Mideast negotiators, Arab governments and special-interest groups not to reject his fresh approach outright.
People familiar with the administration’s thinking believe the release will have benefits even if it never gets Palestinian buy-in and ultimately fails. According to these people, the peace team believes that if Israeli officials are open to the plan and Arab nations do not outright reject it, the proposal could help improve broader Israeli-Arab relations.
PALESTINIAN DISMAY
For years, the prospect of improved ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors had been conditioned on a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the administration believes that a change in regional dynamics — mainly from rising antipathy to Iran — will boost Israel’s standing with not only Egypt and Jordan, which already have peace deals with the Jewish state, but also Saudi Arabia and the smaller Persian Gulf nations, these people say.
There have been signs of warming between Israel and the Persian Gulf states, including both public displays and secret contacts, and the administration sees an opening for even greater cooperation after the plan is released, according to these people.
Trump, for his part, told reporters on Air Force One last week that “It’s a plan that really would work.” He said he spoke to the Palestinians “briefly,” without elaborating.
Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for the Western-backed Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said that’s not true.
“There were no talks with the U.S. administration — neither briefly nor in detail,” he said. “The Palestinian position is clear and consistent in its rejection of Trump’s decisions regarding Jerusalem and other issues, and everything related to the rejected deal.”
Abbas ended contacts with the administration after it recognized disputed Jerusalem as Israel’s capital two years ago. The Palestinians’ anger mounted as Trump repeatedly broke with the international consensus around solving the conflict and took actions seen as biased toward Israel’s rightwing government.
The White House has cut off nearly all U.S. aid to the Palestinians and closed the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington. In November, the Trump administration said that it no longer views Jewish settlements in the occupied territories as a violation of international law, reversing four decades of American policy. The Palestinians view the settlements as illegal and a major obstacle to peace, a position shared by most of the international community.
In Congress, Trump’s announced release of his Mideast plan has caused hardly a ripple against the backdrop of the impeachment drama.
Asked on Friday what he thought about the expected rollout, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said: “I’m on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and we’ve not heard anything about it.”
Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, the committee chairman, defended the administration’s work on a plan.
“I think the people who are working on this are working on this in good faith,” Risch said. “I think the people who are trying to do it really are acting in good faith, hoping they can come up with a solution.”
GAZA SITES STRUCK
Meanwhile, Israeli aircraft struck several militant sites in Gaza late Saturday in response to incendiary balloons launched from the Palestinian enclave.
The Israeli military said the sites belonged to Hamas, the Islamic group ruling the territory, and included weapons manufacturing and intelligence-gathering facilities.
There were no reports of injuries from the airstrikes in southern Gaza Strip.
Blaming Hamas, the military said it considers “any kind of terror activity with great severity and will continue operating as necessary against attempts to harm its civilians.”
Palestinian groups resumed launching flammable balloons into Israel recently and Hamas said it is encouraging the shootings, accusing Israel of not honoring an unofficial truce meant to improve the economy of the narrow enclave.
In trying to bolster the Egyptian and U.N.-mediated truce, Hamas halted the regular weekly protests along Gaza-Israel fence last month.
Last week, a senior Hamas official said that the balloons were a signal to Israel to accelerate the informal “understandings” meant to ease the crippling blockade on Gaza.
The official, Khalil al-Hayya, said the balloons are being launched by disgruntled individuals, not Hamas. But he said his group was “satisfied” with the launches and is ready to send more “if the occupation doesn’t pick up the message.”
Al-Hayya said Hamas expects Israel to allow in more medical supplies, unlimited trade between Gaza and the rest of the world, help create more jobs and extend Qatari payments for electricity and poor families.
Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade when Hamas, viewed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and most of the West, rose to power in a violent takeover in 2007.