The United States will announce the details of President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan after Israel’s parliamentary elections in April, according to Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Speaking during a closed session at a conference in the Polish capital Warsaw, Kushner said the proposals in the plan would mean both Palestinians and Israelis making compromises.
According to Haaretz correspondent Barak Ravid, the plan will be unveiled some time after 9 April, the date of Israel’s elections.
Trump’s “Deal of the Century” plan to resolve the long-running Israel-Palestine conflict has been long touted, although few details have been revealed officially.
A leak of the report on Israel’s Channel 13 last month indicated that it would include a Palestinian state on up to 90 percent of the West Bank, with some parts of East Jerusalem.
The leaked report was condemned by the Palestinian Authority, which said any plan not involving East Jerusalem as capital of the Palestinian state was “destined to fail”.
The conference in Warsaw has been hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an opportunity to build support between Israel and Arab states to counter Iran.
However, the Palestinian Authority urged delegates not to attend.
Nabil Shaath, an adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, said on Thursday that the conference was aiming to “normalise” Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.
Abbas met with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on Tuesday, with the Saudi reportedly affirming the kingdom’s support for an independent Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In a column published by Haaretz, Shaath wrote that: “By fully siding with the Israeli government, [the Americans] have tried to normalise the Israeli occupation and the systematic denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination”.
Abbas’s adviser said the Palestinians had refused to go to the conference.
“The Warsaw conference is part of this context,” he wrote.
“A peace process cannot be turned into an attempt to obtain amnesty for war crimes or to make one of the parties surrender its basic rights under the UN charter.”
The Palestinians have refused to talk to the Trump administration since the US leader recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017.
The Trump administration has since dealt a series of harsh blows to the Palestinian Authority, including cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Palestinians.
Copyright © 2014 – 2022. Middle East Eye. All rights reserved. Only England and Wales jurisdiction apply in all legal matters.
Middle East Eye ISSN 2634-2456