Trump peace plan likely won’t include Palestinian state
Donald Trump ,Jared Kushner and Binyamin Netanyahu
Times of Israel reports, “US President Donald Trump’s peace plan will include considerable economic incentives for Palestinians, but will likely stop short of full statehood, The Washington Post reported on Sunday. The initiative expected to be introduced in the coming months will offer Palestinians an improved version of the status quo, highlighting “autonomy” over “sovereignty,” according to the US daily, which relied on interviews with anonymous American officials, in addition to individuals familiar with the under-wraps proposal.”
“The report followed several interviews by members of Trump’s Middle East team in recent months which also skirted the subject of Palestinian statehood. Instead, Washington is expected to rely on tens of billions of dollars in aid and investment for Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as for Egypt and Jordan, from wealthy Gulf states.”
“The economic plan only works if the region supports it. This is a very important part of the overall equation,” a US official told the Post. However, despite its expectation that Arab states will foot the bill, the Trump administration has also kept those countries in the dark regarding the plan details, offering no commitments that it will guarantee Palestinian statehood, the report said.”
Palestinians burning pictures of Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu
“At the same time, Washington appeared to recognize that any plan that focuses solely on economic concerns and ignores political aspirations will be doomed to fail. “But this is not a so-called economic peace. We are taking very seriously both aspects of this, the political, which deals with all the core issues, and the economic,” the official said. “We understand that if the political aspect of it is not solid, the economic aspect is meaningless. But at the same time, the political aspect will not succeed without a proper economic plan,” the official added.” (more…)