[Midden-Oosten] Trump's special gift to Netanyahu

[Jeff]

[Even the New York Times (below) clearly labels Trump's stunt for what 
it is!]

Al Jazeera:

Trump unveils his Middle East plan amid Palestinian rejections
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/trump-unveils-israeli-plan-palestinian-rejections-200128151735083.html



New York Times:

Trump’s Mideast Plan Is Seen Mainly as an Election Lift for Netanyahu
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/26/world/middleeast/trump-netanyahu-middle-east-plan.html

By Mark Landler
Jan. 26, 2020

LONDON — Less than a month after being sworn in, President Trump 
welcomed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to the White House 
with a bold promise: He would broker a peace accord between the Israelis 
and the Palestinians — the diplomatic unicorn that had eluded half a 
dozen of his predecessors.

“I think we’re going to make a deal,” he said in 2017. “It might be a 
bigger and better deal than people in this room even understand.”

“As with any successful negotiation,” Mr. Trump continued, “both sides 
will have to make compromises. You know that, right?” he added, turning 
to his guest.

Mr. Netanyahu grinned. “Both sides,” he replied.

The Israeli leader will return to the White House for meetings Monday 
and Tuesday, and Mr. Trump is expected at last to lay out the details of 
that long-awaited plan. Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday he hoped to “make 
history” on the visit.

But far from a bold effort to bring old enemies together — one that 
demands painful concessions from both sides — Middle East experts now 
expect the plan to be mainly a booster shot for Mr. Netanyahu’s 
desperate campaign to stay in power.

Benny Gantz, again Mr. Netanyahu’s rival in Israel’s third election in 
less than a year, will have his own separate meeting with Mr. Trump on 
Monday. He had at first resisted the invitation, fearing a political 
trap in which Mr. Netanyahu would get to play the statesman while Mr. 
Gantz would look puny by comparison. But analysts said he could not 
afford to snub the president, given Mr. Trump’s enduring popularity in 
Israel.

The Palestinians, who stopped talking to Mr. Trump after he ordered the 
United States Embassy to be moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in December 
2017, will not be at the White House to be briefed on the plan. They 
have vowed to reject it.

“For him to do this in the middle of an Israeli election, without any 
Palestinian participation and with no intention to follow up with any of 
the participants, shows this is not a peace plan at all,” said Martin S. 
Indyk, who served as special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations 
under President Barack Obama.

“It is a farce from start to finish,” he said.

Mr. Indyk’s verdict is harsh but not uncommon among diplomats who have 
worked on past peace efforts. Like other veterans of those fruitless 
negotiations, in both Democratic and Republican administrations, Mr. 
Indyk watched the early days of Mr. Trump’s diplomacy with fascination 
and even muted hope — that this most undiplomatic of presidents might 
achieve a breakthrough where they had failed.

That triumph of hope over experience was shared by some in the region. 
Palestinians and Israelis took to calling it Mr. Trump’s “deal of the 
century,” outdoing his own description of it as the “ultimate deal.”

The president brought a deal maker’s swagger and a property developer’s 
instincts to a problem that, after all, involves disputed territory. His 
close ties to Mr. Netanyahu — something Mr. Obama lacked — raised hopes 
that he might be able to extract real concessions from Israel. In a sign 
of the importance Mr. Trump attached to the effort, he put his 
son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in charge of it.

Mr. Kushner led a team that included Jason D. Greenblatt, the Trump 
Organization’s former chief lawyer, and David M. Friedman, a bankruptcy 
lawyer with ties to the Jewish settler movement who became Mr. Trump’s 
ambassador to Israel. He would emerge as the most influential adviser to 
Mr. Trump on Israel.

For months, Mr. Kushner and Mr. Greenblatt traveled around the Middle 
East, meeting with Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other 
nations. Their strategy, known as “outside-in,” was designed to build a 
coalition of Arab support for a peace plan. The Arab leaders, the White 
House hoped, would pressure the Palestinian Authority to accept whatever 
Mr. Trump offered.

Mr. Kushner devoted particular attention to Crown Prince Mohammed bin 
Salman of Saudi Arabia, with whom he had cultivated a friendship of 
like-minded scions. Prince Mohammed expressed a willingness to establish 
relations with Israel and said the Israelis “have the right to have 
their own land.”

At home, Mr. Trump’s pro-Israel supporters were growing restive. They 
worried that he might put too much pressure on Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Trump 
told him that a rapid expansion of settlements was not conducive to an 
agreement. After meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the 
Palestinian Authority, in May 2017, Mr. Trump said that it was an 
“honor” — a post that later vanished from his Twitter feed.

Any such worries, however, were laid to rest seven months later when Mr. 
Trump announced he would move the embassy, formally recognizing 
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The move delighted evangelicals, as 
well as pro-Israel donors like Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino 
magnate.

But it drove away the Palestinians, who cut off contact with the White 
House, and doomed the White House’s efforts to build Arab support for 
its plan. King Salman of Saudi Arabia was among those who condemned the 
decision, declaring, “East Jerusalem is an integral part of the 
Palestinian territories.”

Mr. Trump reacted harshly to the Palestinian rejection. He punished them 
by cutting off hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian 
Authority, as well as funding for the United Nations agency that helps 
Palestinian refugees.

The State Department shut down the office of the Palestine Liberation 
Organization in Washington. It downgraded the American consulate in 
Jerusalem, which had been a key channel to the Palestinians, by merging 
it with the embassy under Mr. Friedman, who later said Israel had the 
right to annex parts of the West Bank.

Even as the rift with the Palestinians widened, Mr. Kushner and Mr. 
Greenblatt labored on their plan. Working under a veil of secrecy, they 
compiled a multipage document, with annexes, that officials said would 
propose solutions to all the key disputes: borders, security, refugees 
and the status of Jerusalem.

While the plan never leaked — a rarity in the sievelike world of Middle 
East diplomacy — its general contours became known. It is not expected 
to call for a two-state solution or give East Jerusalem to the 
Palestinians. Nor will it offer Palestinian refugees a right of return 
or other compensation.

Mr. Kushner and Mr. Greenblatt, who has since left the administration, 
predicted in March 2018 that the Israelis and the Palestinians would 
each find things in the plan to embrace and oppose. But it was already 
clear that it would be tilted heavily in Israel’s favor — or more 
precisely, in the favor of their embattled ally, Mr. Netanyahu.

Facing indictment on multiple corruption charges in early 2019, the 
prime minister was fighting for his political life. With Mr. Netanyahu 
facing a closely fought election that April, Mr. Trump gave him an 
election-eve gift, announcing in March that the United States would 
reverse decades of policy and recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the 
Golan Heights, which was seized by Israeli troops in 1967.

With the release of his plan stymied by the instability in Israel, Mr. 
Kushner turned his attention to economics. In June, he announced the 
United States would raise more than $50 billion to improve the lives of 
the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors. His 38-page plan, titled 
“Peace to Prosperity,” had slick graphics and the promotional tone of a 
real estate prospectus.

Mr. Kushner followed up with a two-day workshop in Bahrain, which was 
boycotted by the Palestinians and shrugged off by other Arab leaders, 
for whom the peace project had faded into irrelevance.

Even after Mr. Trump’s shift on the Golan Heights, Mr. Netanyahu was 
unable to cobble together a majority to form a government. After a 
second election, in September, he found himself again short of a 
majority.

If Mr. Trump releases his plan this week, analysts said, it will be less 
about delivering the “deal of the century” than giving Mr. Netanyahu one 
last electoral lift.



Mark Landler is the London bureau chief. In 27 years at The Times, he 
has been bureau chief in Hong Kong and Frankfurt, White House 
correspondent, diplomatic correspondent, European economic 
correspondent, and a business reporter in New York. @MarkLandler

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 27, 2020, Section A, 
Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump’s Long-Awaited 
Middle East Plan Is Seen as a Campaign Lift for Netanyahu.