TEL AVIV – The long-anticipated U.S. peace proposal for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be unveiled before the Muslim holiday of Ramadan is over in June, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner confirmed.
Kushner told some 100 foreign ambassadors in Washington on Wednesday that the plan would require an “open mind” from both sides – both of whom will be forced to make compromises, according to source cited by Reuters.
The source quoted Kushner as saying that the “the plan will require concessions from both sides but won’t jeopardize the security of Israel.”
“We will all have to look for reasonable compromises that will make peace achievable,” Kushner said.
Trump’s Special Mideast Envoy later Jason Greenblatt confirmed the report as “accurate.”
Last week, the Washington Post cited anonymous U.S. officials as well as Arab officials as saying the plan would probably bypass the issue of statehood altogether.
While the proposal, dubbed by Trump as the “deal of the century,” will include major economic and other incentives for Palestinians, it will likely stop short of establishing a Palestinian state, the report stated.
The Palestinian leadership has declared that the plan will be dead on arrival.
Newly appointed Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the only thing that mattered was statehood.
“Where are we going to have the Palestinian state?” he asked. “We are not looking for an entity. We are looking for a sovereign state.”
The Palestinians have also turned to Russia for help in bypassing the proposal.
“We are working to convince Russia and other countries to increase their intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as Trump prepares to announce his unacceptable plan,” a PA official told The Jerusalem Post Tuesday.
“We have no confidence in the Trump administration, whose representatives have fully endorsed the positions of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”
Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh on Tuesday said the PA called on the international community to oppose the plan if it did not include a Palestinian state with eastern Jerusalem as the capital.
“As long as Jerusalem is off the table, then Trump is off the table as well,” Abu Rudeineh said.
Abu Rudeinah noted that the final proposal has yet to be unveiled but added, “[W]hat we have seen from this plan is not acceptable at all. The issue of Jerusalem, the issue of settlements is not on the table. Unless these issues are on the table, we will never accept the [plan].”
“The Americans are not working in an honest way. They are biased and this situation is not going to lead anywhere,” he said.
Kushner however, pushed back on charges that the plan would focus only on economic incentives and not core issues.
He said the political component of the plan is “very detailed,” Reuters cited the source as saying.
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