TEL AVIV – President Donald Trump’s as-yet unveiled peace proposal will be the most detailed yet and will include a major economic plan for the Palestinians, a White House official said Wednesday.
There is still no date set for the plan’s release and a strategy for its roll-out is being developed, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
Last month, Trump’s peace team, comprising son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and Mideast special negotiator Jason Greenblatt, toured the region in an apparent attempt to gather support from Arab leaders in the region. The Palestinian leadership continued its boycott of the U.S. administration and refused to meet with the two.
The two envoys asked leaders in the region to outline a solution to the conflict’s central issues that they could live with and the other side could accept, the official said according to the report.
He added that the proposal would be the most specific ever presented by an American administration.
According to the official, Trump had been told by his team that while his declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the subsequent move of the U.S. embassy there would spark some short-term disruption, in the long-term it would improve the prospects for peace.
Despite the Palestinian boycott, Trump’s team is expecting the Palestinian Authority to read it and provide some feedback on how to improve it, the official said.
On Saturday, the PA boasted that it had “incapacitated” Trump’s peace plan, which it sees as no more than a “conspiracy” aimed at “liquidating” the Palestinian cause and national rights.
The PA urged Palestinians and Arab states to “stick together … to prevent … the deal of the century.”
PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh slammed the U.S.’s supposed “blatant bias towards Israel and the imbalance of power [created].”
“The region is now at a crossroads to decide the fate of principle issues that affect the interests of its peoples,” Abu Rudeineh said.
“The Palestinian leadership’s commitment to Palestinian and Arab options and national positions has given hope to the people who are continuing to suffer because of their failure to understand the truth about what is being planned against them,” he added.
“The prevalent chaos and tension in the region are a natural result of the failure to solve the Palestinian issue,” he said. “As long as Jerusalem is burning, so will the Arab world.”
He called on Palestinians to “restore the national spirit to face surprises, first and foremost the blatant U.S. bias in favor of Israel.”
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