Arafat Hasan: US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he wanted a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a turnaround from the administration’s statement in the past where it had suggested it would support a two-state solution only if both sides agreed.
In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Trump also said he wanted to unveil a peace plan in the next two to three months.
According to Israeli media reports, Netanyahu said he was not surprised by Trump’s stance. However, he said that he expected the US president to accept the Israeli interpretation of a two-state solution, which may mean continued Israeli security control “west of Jordan”.
Palestinian leaders have rejected Trump as a peace broker because of his aggressive pro-Israel policies.
Since taking office in 2017, Trump has moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, declaring the Holy city as Israel’s capital; pulled the US out of the UN cultural body UNESCO, accusing it of “anti-Israel bias”; withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council over its criticism of Israeli policies, and cut funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Washington also suspended $25m in aid for hospitals that serve Palestinians in East Jerusalem, which was illegally annexed by Israel in 1982.
Earlier this month, the White House closed the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington to put pressure on Palestinians who are seeking to refer Israel’s violations to the International Criminal Court.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, stressed that a two-state solution must be based on the 1967 borders, before the Israeli military occupied Gaza and the West Bank.
In 2011, when then-US President Barack Obama called for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, Israeli leaders rebuked him.
Husam Zomlot, head of the recently closed Palestinian mission in Washington, said Trump’s policies have been destroying the prospect of a two-state solution.
Critics of the two-state solution argue that it is no longer viable because of Israel’s ongoing colonization of the West Bank, where about 400,000 settlers live under Israeli law and use separate education and transport systems in what legal scholars say amounts to a policy of apartheid.
-Source: Middle East Eye