United States President Donald Trump is expected to release his administration’s Middle East plan next month, according to a report by The Associated Press.
The White House team charged with drawing up the peace plan, led by Middle East special envoy Jason Greenblatt, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and the president’s advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, is scheduled to release the plan at the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Citing five US officials and a congressional aide, the AP report expects the Trump administration to release details of the plan following the end of Ramadan on June 14th.
Greenblatt and Kushner have reportedly already begun releasing select portions of the plan to some close US allies.
Earlier this month, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) returned from a trip to Washington with reports that the Trump plan would call for partitioning the country into two states and internationalizing the ancient city of Jerusalem.
In this regard, the plan is not different from previous American attempts to implement a two-state solution. The difference is expected to lie in Trump’s belief in his own ability to bulldoze it through.
Trump has been positioning all the parties for a successful implementation of his plan. By moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in such an ostentatious and divisive manner that played in the international press as a major Israeli diplomatic triumph over the Palestinians, the president has fostered a political atmosphere in which Israel owes his administration a tremendous debt.
Trump has also frozen some $200 million in aid earmarked by the US federal budget for the Palestinian Authority, AP reported. Despite recommendations by the State Department that the administration free up at least part of the money, three officials told AP that the White House has given no indication it plans to release the funds.
By diplomatically indebting Israel to his administration and beating the Palestinians into submission, Trump seems to believe he can succeed where his predecessors failed in pushing through Washington’s two-state agenda.
