IT COULD have been Davos, or any of the other conferences on the annual circuit for the world’s wealthy. Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and a senior adviser to America’s president, took the stage to offer his vision for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The combatants, he lectured, were “trapped in an inefficient framework of the past”. Their obstinacy is a barrier to turning the West Bank and Gaza into “a bustling commercial and tourist centre”. If 70 years of warfare would simply come to a halt, “we can turn this region from a victim of past conflicts into a model for commerce and advancement across the world.”
Before he took office in 2017 Donald Trump vowed to broker the “ultimate deal” between Israelis and Palestinians. To oversee the effort he chose, Mr Kushner, a real-estate developer with no experience in diplomacy or the Middle East. The result has been about as expected. There is still no political plan for resolving the underlying conflict and its many thorny issues: borders, refugees or the status of Jerusalem, and the very notion of Palestinian statehood. Its release has been repeatedly delayed; diplomats hint that it may remain on the shelf until Mr Trump’s second term, if he wins one.
Instead Mr Kushner organised this two-day confab in Bahrain. Dubbed the “Peace to Prosperity” workshop, the centrepiece is a 96-page plan that pledges $50bn worth of investment in Palestine and neighbouring countries after a peace deal. The document, to be fair, is impressive in scope. It suggests projects to boost agriculture and tourism, fix Palestine’s infrastructure and improve governance. All of this would be funded by a mix of grants, concessional loans and private-sector money, from the wealthy Gulf states and elsewhere.
Missing amidst all this detail, however, is anything about the Israeli occupation, in its various forms, of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or of schism between the Palestinian leaders in the two territories. The plan presupposes that the noxious politics of the conflict have simply vanished. Mr Kushner proposes spending $5bn to connect the West Bank and Gaza, for example. Israel has undertaken to do this for years but never has, because the link is not simply a matter of building a monorail. It raises political and security questions for Israel. Another proposal calls for $2bn to give the Palestinians 5G wireless infrastructure. Entrepreneurs would be thrilled. But there is no mention of how to overcome objections from the Israeli army, which let the West Bank install 3G only last year (a decade after the rest of the world).
As it stands, then, the plan is thoroughly unrealistic. That is the point, Mr Kushner’s supporters argue. It is meant to offer the Palestinians a peace dividend, an incentive to accept his (perhaps) forthcoming political vision. They certainly need economic help. Unemployment in the West Bank is 17%. In Gaza it is as high as 55%. Adjusted for inflation, GDP per person is almost unchanged from 20 years ago.
But to the Palestinians this smells like a bribe from a hostile president. Mr Trump cut all American aid to them—even $25m in funding for hospitals in East Jerusalem that treat, among other things, children with cancer. He overturned decades of precedent to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. And aides hint that the political plan will give the Palestinians far less than the sovereign state along the pre-1967 borders that they demand. America’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, said this month that Israel had the right to annex some territory in the West Bank.
So the Palestinians are boycotting the event. Their president, Mahmoud Abbas, refused to send anyone from his government. “The deal of shame will go to hell,” he said in May. The private sector also declined invitations. Of the 5m Palestinians in the occupied territories, the only publicly-confirmed attendee is Ashraf al-Jabari, a former secret-police officer who has turned into a businessman and has cultivated unusual ties with Israeli settlers in his home town of Hebron. He also has a history of writing bum cheques
Few of the other attendees are enthusiastic. “We tried to find the lowest level of representation that wouldn’t be offensive,” quips a European diplomat in Tel Aviv. Jordan and Egypt sent only their deputy finance ministers. With the Palestinians boycotting, Arab states were reluctant to share a stage with Israeli officials. But the latter weren’t invited either because of Arab misgivings (though some Israeli businessmen did come). Even press coverage is limited: organisers did not allow most foreign journalists covering the Middle East to attend. They did accredit reporters from six Israeli outlets, who have sent slightly fawning dispatches. The country’s largest newspaper, Israel Hayom, which backs both Mr Trump and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, dubbed Bahrain the “island of hope”, an odd appellation for a kingdom that crushed a popular uprising in 2011.
And that, perhaps, points to the real outcome of the workshop. It is the most public manifestation of a long and mostly private rapprochement between Israel and the Gulf states, one the Trump administration is keen to promote. The event will do nothing to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it is another sign that the Gulf states are looking to move past that conflict. Though they are not quite ready to recognise Israel, they see it as an important regional power, an ally against a shared threat from Iran. The Palestinians have far less to offer. “All we have is our moral power,” says Mkhaimer Abu Saada, a political analyst in Gaza. That still counts for something—but less and less with each passing day.
JERUSALEM - Israeli television said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan would propose a Palestinian state on as much as 90 percent of the occupied West Bank, with a capital in East Jerusalem - but not including its holy sites.
The White House, which has kept details of the plan under wraps and said its release could still be months away, dismissed the report by Israel’s Reshet 13 TV as inaccurate speculation.
Citing what it said was a source briefed by the Americans, the television report said the plan would entail Israel annexing Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank while isolated settlements would either be evacuated or their construction halted.
Trump wants the proposed Israeli moves to be supplemented by territorial swaps with the Palestinians, and for East Jerusalem’s walled Old City - site of major Jewish, Muslim and Christian shrines - to be under Israeli sovereignty but with the joint management of the Palestinians and Jordan, the report said.
It said “most Arab neighborhoods” in East Jerusalem would be under Palestinian sovereignty as a future capital.
Israel calls all of Jerusalem its “eternal and undivided capital”, a status not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem, including the Al Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City, as capital of a future state.
The report made no mention of the fate of Palestinian refugees, another core dispute in the decades-old conflict, or of how the Gaza Strip, which is under the control of Hamas Islamists opposed to peace with Israel, might fit into the plan.
Israeli and Palestinian officials did not immediately respond to the Reshet 13 report.
Trump’s Middle East peace envoy Jason Greenblatt, a main architect of the plan along with the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, said in a message on Twitter the report “is not accurate.” He did not specify, however, what in the report was incorrect.
“Speculation about the content of the plan is not helpful Very few people on the planet know what is in it ... for now,” Greenblatt wrote. “Peddling false, distorted or biased stories to the media is irresponsible & harmful to the process.”
In separate remarks to reporters, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, predicted that the Trump plan would not be released before an Israeli election on April 9.
Pence claims ISIS 'defeated' after US soldiers die in Syria attack
Opinion polls predict an easy win that would secure a fifth term for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a rightist whose U.S.-sponsored peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stalled in 2014.
“From what we understand, it will not be presented before the election,” Danon said. “It’s a smart decision because we don’t want it to become the issue of the elections.”
DURING eight years in which a glacial chill fell on relations between the administration of Barack Obama and a series of right-wing Israeli governments, American officials talked of Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, as a political coward unwilling to stand up to zealots on his own side.
The contrast to that scorn was rather striking as Mr Netanyahu arrived at the White House on February 15th for his first official visit to a White House run by Donald Trump. True, Mr Trump urged Israel to show some restraint, telling his guest at a press conference to “hold back” on building Jewish settlements on territories occupied by Israel in 1967 “for a little bit”, pending peace talks that the new president said should be widened to include Arab states. But such admonishments are tiny—and could easily have been scripted by aides to Mr Netanyahu. For the prime minister likes to cite American sensitivities to the expansion of settlements—and what he calls his unrivalled ability to navigate them—as a way to face down hardliners in his coalition who would have him disavow any prospects for Palestinian statehood, or annex bits of the West Bank.
In a subtle but important shift, the Republican ditched a long-standing, bipartisan American insistence that peace can be reached only through the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside the Jewish one. Mr Trump signalled that America would defer to local opinion, saying: “So I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like...I can live with either one.” That presidential statement all but ends the diplomatic fiction that all sides are committed to a two-state process, and puts the onus on Israel to decide what should happen to the occupied territories.
Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly said he is willing to negotiate over the establishment of a Palestinian state “without preconditions”. But in a hardening of tone he insisted on two long-held “prerequisites of peace”: Palestine would have to recognise Israel as a Jewish state and Israel would have to “retain the overriding security control over the entire area”.
The visiting Israeli leader had to offer some concessions. Mr Trump had campaigned on a promise to move the American embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. But since taking office the president has been warned by foreign allies that taking such a symbolic step in a city claimed by both peoples as their capital would risk a backlash, and even violence. In his White House press conference Mr Trump said he was looking at the embassy move “very, very strongly”.
On this visit Mr Netanyahu backed away, gingerly, from his previous demand that America tear up a deal brokered by the Obama administration and other world powers to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Mr Trump calls the nuclear pact “one of the worst deals” he has seen. But foreign allies and members of Team Trump, such as the defence secretary, James Mattis, have told the president that the deal is the least bad option for slowing Iran’s nuclear programme, as long as America enforces its terms more strictly and is willing to sanction Iran for other infractions in such areas as ballistic missile technology. The Israeli leader contented himself with praising Mr Trump for taking a tougher line on Iranian “aggression”.
Mr Netanyahu also faces the fact that Mr Trump’s priority in foreign policy is destroying the Sunni Muslim fanatics of Islamic State (IS)—a goal that matters less urgently to Israel than containing Iran, the largest power in the Shia Muslim world. Given that Iran is itself fighting IS in Syria and Iraq, the two goals could even be in conflict, notes Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an American think-tank. He asks: “How do you destroy IS without empowering Iran?”
The Israeli prime minister fudged the distinction, denouncing both IS and Iran in the same attack on “militant Islam” and hailing Mr Trump’s “great courage” in tackling “radical Islamic terror”. Quite a change since his last White House visit.
Israel's ambassador to the UK has apologised after a senior member of his staff was secretly filmed saying he wanted to "take down" Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan.
Israeli Embassy senior political officer Shai Masot made the comment in footage filmed in a London restaurant and obtained by the Mail on Sunday.
He told a reporter that Sir Alan was creating "a lot of problems".
Ambassador Mark Regev said this was not the embassy or government's view.
Secret recording
The conversation involved Mr Masot and Maria Strizzolo, an aide to education minister Robert Halfon, the former political director of Conservative Friends of Israel, as well as an undercover reporter.
It was recorded in October 2016 as part of an investigation by Al Jazeera.
Mr Masot asked her: "Can I give you some names of MPs that I would suggest you take down?"
Ms Strizzolo replied that all MPs have "something they're trying to hide" and Mr Masot responded by saying "I have some MPs", adding "she knows which MPs I want to take down" before specifying "the deputy foreign minister".
Image copyrightAFP/GETTY IMAGESImage captionShai Masot said Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan (pictured) was creating "problems"
Sir Alan, who has described expanding Israeli settlements as a "stain on the face of the globe", was seen as more of a problem than Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson - who was "basically good", according to Mr Masot in a transcript of the conversation.
"He just doesn't care. He is an idiot but has become minister of foreign affairs without any responsibilities. If something real happened it won't be his fault... it will be Alan Duncan."
Sir Alan launched a scathing attack on Israel in 2014, when MPs backed Palestinian statehood, deeming Israeli settlements as an "act of theft".
"Occupation, annexation, illegality, negligence, complicity - this is a wicked cocktail which brings shame on Israel," he told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme.
Sir Alan, who was special envoy to Yemen and Oman at the time, said "international law must be upheld" to prevent further settlements.
'Completely unacceptable'
Crispin Blunt, Foreign Affairs Select Committee chairman, said the "apparent activity of a diplomat of a foreign state", in reference to Mr Masot, was "formally outrageous and deserving of investigation".
Lord Stuart Polak, director of Conservative Friends of Israel, said: "We utterly condemn any attempt to undermine Sir Alan, or any minister, or any member of Parliament."
Ms Strizzolo told the newspaper that her conversation with Mr Masot was "tongue-in-cheek and gossipy".
Image copyrightAFP/GETTY IMAGESImage captionForeign Secretary Boris Johnson was described as an "idiot" in the recording
In a statement, the Israeli Embassy said it "rejects the remarks concerning minister Duncan, which are completely unacceptable".
"The comments were made by a junior embassy employee who is not an Israeli diplomat, and who will be ending his term of employment with the embassy shortly," it said.
"Ambassador Regev on Friday spoke with minister Duncan, apologised for the comments and made clear that the embassy considered the remarks to be completely unacceptable."
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The Israeli Ambassador has apologised and is clear these comments do not reflect the views of the embassy or government of Israel.
"The UK has a strong relationship with Israel and we consider the matter closed."
