President speaks in Israel, Palestine
Trump meets privately with Abbas to discuss two-state demands
JERUSALEM — President Donald Trump told Israelis and Palestinians Tuesday that he knows they are eager to reach a peace agreement with each other, and that he is committed to helping them “make a deal.”
In a speech at the Israel Museum as he prepared to end his four-day trip to the Middle East and depart for his next stop in Rome, Trump repeated his call for Arab countries and Israel to form a grand coalition with the United States to “drive out the terrorists and the extremists from our midst” and “defend our citizens and the people of the world.” “This trip is focused on that goal,” he said. Trump recognized that Israeli-Palestinian peace is a key component of cooperation in the region, although he has not outlined how he hopes to achieve an agreement that has eluded many presidents before him.
In some respects, his effusive praise for Israel during his two days here — which also included a Tuesday morning visit to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem, on the Israeli-occupied West Bank — appeared to endorse Israeli claims to a united capital in Jerusalem.
Noting that Jerusalem is a “sacred city,” and that “the ties of the Jewish people to this holy land are ancient and eternal,” Trump recalled his Monday visits to the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, sites sacred to Jews and Christians that are located in East Jerusalem, part of West Bank and claimed by Palestinians as the capital of their envisioned state.
To sustained applause, Trump cited the “unbreakable bond between United States of America and Israel” a place that he called “a testament to the unbreakable spirit of the Jewish people.” He spoke movingly of “a future where Jewish, Christian and Muslim children can grow up together in peace.”
“America’s security partnership with Israel is stronger than ever,” he said. “Under my administration, you see the difference. Big, big beautiful difference, including the Iron Dome missile defense program … [and] David’s Sling,” an aircraft interception system. The former was established here under the Barack Obama administration, and the latter under former President George W. Bush.
Netanyahu and Trump, who introduced him and praised “the leadership that you bring” both condemned Monday night’s terrorist attack in Britain, claimed by the Islamic State, which asserts religious authority over Sunni Muslims.
But in describing the authors of global terrorism, Trump focused nearly all his attention on Shiite Iran, and the anti-Israel organizations it supports, Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran’s leaders, he said, “routinely call for Israel’s destruction. Not with Donald J. Trump,” he said. “Believe me.”
“The United States is firmly committed to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, and halting their support of terrorism and militias,” Trump said to sustained applause, as Netanyahu stood and pumped his fist.
Earlier, he traveled to Bethlehem for a private meeting with Abbas to discuss the peace process and his vision for anti-terrorism cooperation.
In joint remarks afterward, Abbas said he welcomed Trump’s efforts, which had “given all the nations across the region so much hope and optimism of the possibility of making a dream come true.”
But while Trump spoke in generalities about the goal, Abbas laid out the specifics of Palestinian demands — which all have been supported by the Arabs and rejected by Israel through decades of unsuccessful peace negotiations shepherded by American presidents.
“We reassert to you our positions of a twostate solution along the borders of 1967, a state of Palestine with its capital in East Jerusalem, living alongside of Israel,” he said, referring to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank following a war against three Arab armies.
Abbas also spoke of Palestinian insistence that all “final status issues” be resolved “based on international law” and United Nations resolutions, as well as the Arab Peace Initiative first offered more than a decade ago. It promised Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state.
Escorted by Israeli police and helicopters, Trump and his delegation sped down Hebron Road and found themselves, just minutes from their Jerusalem hotel, at the gates of Bethlehem in the West Bank.
The closeness of Bethlehem — the physical proximity between Israel and the Palestinian territory — surprised most first-time visitors in the entourage.
Trump and the convoy passed through the 26-foot-tall concrete wall with watch towers that is Israel’s separation barrier, and past “Checkpoint 300,” where thousands of Palestinian workers cross into Israel each morning to reach their jobs on Israeli construction sites.
Trump has cited the Israeli barrier as an example of the kind of wall he wants to build between the United States and Mexico, but many Palestinians view it as a symbol of oppression.
Later, Trump told his museum audience that after his meeting with Abbas, “I can tell you the Palestinians are ready to reach for peace. … I know you’ve heard it before. I’m telling you, they are ready to reach for peace.
“My good friend Benjamin [Netanyahu] he wants peace.” Both sides, he said, “will face tough decisions. But with determination and compromise. … Israelis and Palestinians can make a deal.”
There was no applause from the audience.