U.S. plans for Mideast peace met by criticism

JERUSALEM — When the Trump administration cut hundreds of millions of dollars of aid for Palestinians last year, the Parents Circle, a coexistence group of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families, lost 30% of its budget overnight.

So members were shocked Sunday to learn the White House is now using its photos in promotional materials for a U.S. peace plan that has been skewered by veterans of past Mideast peace efforts. “I think it’s one of the most cynical and insensitive acts,” said Robi Damelin, a spokeswoman for the group.

While U.S. allies in the region have been cool to the plan ahead of a launching conference in Bahrain this week, former U.S. diplomats and Mideast experts criticized it for recycling past proposals, making unrealistic projections and ignoring Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank.

“The Palestinians’ economic problem isn’t a lack of money; it’s a lack of liberty,” Aaron David Miller, a former senior Mideast adviser to Republican and Democratic administrations, wrote on Twitter.

The White House on Saturday unveiled the $50 billion plan, saying it would seek to raise the cash for a series of investment and infrastructure projects to support its muchanticipated but still unreleased Middle East peace plan. It called the proposal “the most ambitious international effort for the Palestinian people to date.”

The plan calls for $27.5 billion of projects in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, areas claimed by the Palestinians for an independent state, with remaining funds allocated for Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.

Those countries either border the Palestinian territories or have large populations of Palestinian refugees. The projects envisioned are in the health care, education, power, water, high-tech, tourism and agriculture sectors and include a land link through Israel between the West Bank and Gaza.

President Donald Trump’s Mideast team, led by his senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, scheduled a “workshop” in the Gulf state of Bahrain on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the proposal. Already, expectations are low.

The Palestinians have rejected the proposal and will not be attending. Accusing the U.S. of unfairly favoring Israel, the Palestinians say there can be no economic plan without a political horizon aimed at ending a half century of Israeli occupation.

The Israelis, meanwhile, were not even invited after the White House said it did not want the gathering to be “political.” Without participation by the two key players, the conference will instead include a collection of lowranking officials from Arab countries and a handful of private Israelis and Palestinians.