Washington, Dec 8: When President Donald Trump told the Palestinian president of his intention to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he assured him a peace plan being put together would please the Palestinians, officials said, an apparent effort to limit fallout over his break with longtime US policy.
Trump’s phone call to Mahmoud Abbas Tuesday, the day before he made his bombshell announcement on Jerusalem, appeared to shed new light on behind-the-scenes efforts by White House advisers to craft a peace blueprint expected to be rolled out in the first half of 2018 but which has now been thrown into doubt because of an angry outcry across the Middle East.
With Palestinians declaring it will be difficult for the United States to act as an honest broker after essentially siding with Israel on one of the central disputes in the conflict, administration officials said they expected a “cooling-off period.”
Trump’s team, led by his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, will press on with development of a plan to serve as the foundation for renewed Israeli–Palestinian negotiations, hoping the furore will blow over and that any pause in diplomatic contacts with the Palestinians will not last long, US officials said.
But amid protests in the Palestinian territories and uncertainty about whether the Palestinians will stay engaged in the peace effort, one US official said the process could still be disrupted.
“If they are still saying they’re not going to talk, we’re not going to do it then,” the official said.
Washington’s major Western and Arab allies have warned that Trump’s decision on Jerusalem could doom attempts to achieve what the US President has called the “ultimate deal” of Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Details of the negotiating framework have yet to be finalised and there is little indication of tangible progress.
But officials said it would deal with all the major issues, including Jerusalem, borders, security, the future of Jewish settlements on occupied land and the fate of Palestinian refugees, and would also call for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to provide significant financial support to the Palestinians.
In his call to Abbas Tuesday, Trump sought to temper the blow from his Jerusalem announcement by stressing that the Palestinians stood to gain from the peace plan that Kushner and US Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt were crafting, according to two US and two Palestinian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Hafiz Saeed leads rally in Lahore
Lahore: Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed on Friday made his first public appearance after he was freed from house arrest and led a rally in Lahore to launch a countrywide campaign against US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The Jammat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief, who carries a bounty of $10 million, was released from a 10-month-long house arrest on November 24 by the Pakistan government. Saeed said the Defence Council Pakistan (DCP) will send its delegations to Muslim countries and convince them not to open their embassies in Jerusalem as he led the rally outside the JuD headquarters in Chauburji after the Friday prayers. The banned JuD, believed to be the front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) which carried out the 2008 Mumbai terror attack in which 166 people were killed, is an active member of the DCP. (Agencies)
