At a White House meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, President Trump said he’ll unveil a proposed peace plan for the Middle East on Tuesday.
Trump was also scheduled to meet with Netanyahu’s chief political rival, Benny Gantz — but it appears that Trump is focused on boosting Netanyahu’s chances in the Israeli election set for March 2nd.
“The president said he would release details of his administration’s long-delayed, 50-page political blueprint under development since 2017” at noon on Tuesday, before holding more meetings with Netanyahu, reports the Wall Street Journal.
“We’re going show a plan. It’s been worked on by everybody and we’ll see whether or not it gets [support],” Trump said. “If it does, that will be great. And if it doesn’t, we can live with it too. But I think it might have a chance.”
“I look forward to making history with you tomorrow,” Netanyahu told Trump, adding that he views the president as “the greatest man Israel [has ever] had in the White House.”
However the meetings and the peace plan affect Israel politically, prospects that the plan will receive Palestinian support seem vanishingly small.
No Palestinian representatives were included in this week’s meetings, prompting one Palestinian leader to call the whole thing “the hoax and the fraud of the century.”
“Palestinian officials have also said they would reject any plan that doesn’t include East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state that is based on borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war,” notes the Journal.
Details of Trump’s plan are not known, but it’s thought to include “unilateral Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley and Jewish settlements on the West Bank,” reports the New York Times.
“It is nothing but a plan to liquidate the Palestinian cause,” Muhammad Shtayyeh, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, said on Monday, according to the Times, which added that:
“Many analysts say the Trump peace plan, developed under the oversight of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is relevant mainly for its potential impact on Israel’s … election, which will decide the fate of the embattled Mr. Netanyahu” — who faces corruption charges in Israel — “and as a distraction” from Trump’s ongoing impeachment trial.