US envoy says Palestinian leaders seek to kill peace plan

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy is accusing the Palestinian leadership of trying to kill the U.S. president’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan even before its unveiling and urges them instead to hold fire until they see the details, saying it would be a mistake to declare it “dead on arrival.”In an interview with Reuters, Jason Greenblatt, a chief architect of what Trump has called the “deal of the century,” pushed back against Palestinian officials’ rebuke of the coming peace proposals that they believe will be heavily biased in favor of Israel and deliver a blow to their goal of statehood.The Palestinian Authority has boycotted the U.S. peace effort, led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, since late 2017 when the Republican president decided to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reversing decades of U.S. policy.Greenblatt and Kushner are heading a team preparing to roll out the long-awaited plan as early as June. They intend to proceed despite deep skepticism among experts that they can succeed where decades of U.S.-backed efforts have failed. However, further delays are always possible, given Middle East volatility, including tensions from recent Gaza violence.“The Palestinian Authority is trying to kill a plan they haven’t seen,” said Greenblatt, who has openly exchanged criticism with senior Palestinian officials via Twitter. “The plan can offer them something that can be exciting to them and can transform their current situation ... They should sit tight and hold their fire until the plan comes out.”“For any side to say it’s dead on arrival and not give it a lot of attention and hard work is a tremendous missed opportunity,” he told Reuters this week.Though the plan’s authors insist the exact contents are known only to a handful of insiders, Trump’s aides have disclosed it will address the major political issues of the long-running conflict such as the status of Jerusalem and also offer prescriptions for the troubled Palestinian economy.They have said they expect Israelis and Palestinians will both be critical of some of the proposals. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told a meeting at the United Nations attended by Greenblatt on Thursday that the United States seemed to be crafting a plan for a Palestinian surrender to Israel and insisted “there’s no amount of money that can make it acceptable.”

from The News International - World http://bit.ly/2HkgXRh