Thread: Abbas adviser says Trump visit could reopen path to talks

Abbas adviser says Trump visit could reopen path to talks

By The Associated Press
BETHLEHEM, West Bank
May 23, 2017, 2:11 AM ET

A senior Palestinian official says he expects President Donald Trump's visit to the Holy Land to reopen a path toward resuming long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Trump is meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday in the West Bank's biblical city of Bethlehem.

Trump has said he wants to broker a deal that has proven elusive for the past two decades. The Palestinians want a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, captured by Israel half a century ago.

Abbas' adviser Majdi Khaldi told the Voice of Palestine radio that in the short term, renewed negotiations must address the Palestinians' economic problems that are linked to continued conflict and Israeli restrictions on trade and movement.

Khaldi says that "this visit will open the way for relaunching the peace process."

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...talks-47575773

The President visits Palestine today, will be in Bethlehem.

Khaldi says that "this visit will open the way for relaunching the peace process."

It will be wonderful thing for the Israelis and Palestinians to make peace after all these years.

Why Trump is on track to disappoint Israel’s Netanyahu

By Ishaan Tharoor May 23 at 1:00 AM

Even by their standards, the bromance between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed particularly deep in Jerusalem on Monday. Netanyahu, relaxed and beaming, welcomed the American president to the “united capital of the Jewish state,” the second stop on Trump's overseas tour.

“I think we quote each other,” said Netanyahu, with Trump grinning at his side. “We understand each other and so much of the things that we wish to accomplish for both our countries.”

It was a marked change in atmosphere from meetings with Trump's predecessor. Netanyahu and former president Barack Obama clashed over the American role in brokering a nuclear deal with Iran, which Netanyahu actively lobbied against — including during a 2015 speech to Congress. The American refusal to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements in the waning weeks of the Obama presidency led to howls of fury from the Israeli government. Now all is sunny again.

But no matter the comparatively good vibes surrounding Trump's trip to Israel, Netanyahu may grow disappointed in the coming months and years.

Trump's election lifted hopes among Israeli right-wingers and ultranationalists that Washington would shelve talk about the two-state solution and look the other way as vast settlement expansion took place in the West Bank. But, just a few months later, Trump seems genuinely eager to strike a peace accord and has slow-pedaled his promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, a gesture that would enrage Palestinians and infuriate the Arab statesmen Trump hopes to enlist in his peace efforts. That has some on the Israeli right grumbling already.

There's also no indication so far that the president is moving to scrap the nuclear deal, which Netanyahu and his allies hoped would be jettisoned soon after Trump took office.

Sure, Trump did offer up the sort of harsh language on Iran — Israel's regional foe — that Netanyahu wanted to hear. The United States would work with Israel to roll back “the threat of an Iranian regime that is threatening the region and causing so much violence and suffering,” Trump said. He also took the unprecedented step of visiting the Western Wall, something no sitting American president has ever done because of the sensitivities around the site and Jerusalem's disputed status. Netanyahu celebrated the act, telling Trump that the “people of Israel applaud you for it” — but Trump pointedly did not bring any Israeli politicians along on his visit.

“The bottom line is that not only does Trump have no intention of jeopardizing his relations with Sunni Arab leaders by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, he won’t even make the tiniest gesture in that direction by allowing Netanyahu to join him for a few minutes in the Old City,” wrote Haaretz journalist Anshel Pfeffer.

Instead of breaking from the past, Trump seems to be taking the equivocating posture of his predecessors.

“The early perceptions that Trump would reverse all of Obama’s policy decisions and never challenge Israel very quickly proved inaccurate,” wrote Daniel Shapiro, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel under Obama. “So far, his administration has embarked on a much more traditional approach of seeking to restrain Israeli settlements, curtail Palestinian violence and incitement, and revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward a two-state solution, with the support of key Arab states.”

On Tuesday, Trump will travel to Bethlehem to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a politician who is increasingly unpopular at home but still championed by foreign leaders as a key interlocutor for Mideast peace.

Trump “has built up Abbas by treating him with respect. And his envoy is pressing the Israelis to take meaningful steps to allow the Palestinians to grow their economy,” said Martin Indyk, a former U.S. envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, in an interview with the Atlantic. “It’s almost exactly what Bill Clinton did when he was president.”

The big question is whether Trump will follow through on his stated zeal to fix the problem, especially when the status quo seems to serve his friend Netanyahu's interests.

“Both the Israelis and Palestinians are aware that even a more traditional American president is unlikely to have the political will to do what is necessary to broker a just peace agreement,” wrote Yousef Munayyer, a scholar at the Middle East Institute. “With Trump, they know the chances are even more remote. At the same time, neither can afford to alienate Washington. So they must carefully play along as Trump engages the issues, and they will likely seek opportunities to get whatever they can from him in the process.”

Ilan Goldenberg, a Middle East expert at the Center for a New American Security, suggested Netanyahu is now “freaked out because Trump seems serious about peace.” That means he “will have to produce” at the risk of antagonizing key right-wing allies — and likely losing votes to their parties.

“With Obama, Israelis may not always have gotten everything they wanted,” wrote Shapiro. “But they always got consistency.” With Trump, it appears, Netanyahu may get neither.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.862f62d324a2

I hope journalists in the United States can put their personal bias aside for a couple of months and allow this magnificent peace mission our President has embarked upon to sprout and bloom. If you're paying attention you'll see that this trip isn't just about the Arab countries, the Palestinia dispute with Israel, or the Iran Nuclear Deal. It's about the Arab and Muslim nations, the Palestinians, the Israelis, Iran, Russia, North Korea, Afghanistan and much much more. It's about everything on the chess board. He's building new alliances behind the values of peace, security and prosperity. Many Presidents have talked about it and wanted it, they just didn't know how to do it.

Trump's got this. So to the journalists, this would be a good time for you to start some non-biased reporting on the actual activities of this Presidency instead of analyzing your own opinions and self-styled hypotheticals designed to suit your own bias.

Judith Miller just expressed her opinion that she has no hope for peace between Palestine and Israel. When she was asked why by Fox News, she said "because I've been disappointed by the peace process in the Middle East so many times before." Well, you poor baby, get a grip, Judith, you are a reporter, you are to report, not predict, and certainly not do so through a lens of your own snowflake emotions.

Peace has a huge chance this time. Trump has just finagled the support of 55 Arab and Muslim nations who are ready to invest and act against terrorism and are close to ending the Arab boycott against Israel over the Palestinians while combating Iran over it's role in Syria and Sponsoring Terrorism.

If the Corrupt Media, Wholly Stupid DemoQuacks, Yellow-Livered Republicans and the Treasonous Deep State will sit down and shut up, they will see the mastery of a pure goal being met. Doesn't happen very often in our world today, so it would pay to stop interfering in this miracle and instead enjoy the blessing of being alive to watch it unfold. If you haven't figured out the role of Russia in all of this yet, you will soon. Trump is always at work with the diversion, "look over here, while I'm over there."

It will be beautiful. Stay Tuned.

Upon President Trump's arrival in Bethlehem this morning, the Palestinians had rolled out the red carpet, band and officials waiting, and the band played the Star-Spangled Banner.

Nice!!