LONDON -- Less than a month after being sworn in, President Donald 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
LONDON — Less than a month after being sworn in, President Donald 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.
Benny Gantz, again Netanyahu’s rival in Israel’s third election in less than a year, will have his own separate meeting with Trump on Monday. He had at first resisted the invitation, fearing a political trap in which Netanyahu would get to play the statesman while Gantz would look puny by comparison. But analysts said he could not afford to snub the president, given Trump’s enduring popularity in Israel.
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 Netanyahu — something Obama lacked — raised hopes that he might be able to extract real concessions from Israel. In a sign of the importance Trump attached to the effort, he put his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in charge of it.
At home, Trump’s pro-Israel supporters were growing restive. They worried that he might put too much pressure on Netanyahu. 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, Trump said that it was an “honor” — a post that later vanished from his Twitter feed.
The State Department shut down the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Washington. It downgraded the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, which had been a key channel to the Palestinians, by merging it with the embassy under Friedman, who later said Israel had the right to annex parts of the West Bank.
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