By BENNY AVNI, Special to the Sun | February 6, 2020
Jared Kushner’s observation that champions of past failed plans for Mideast peace are first in line to condemn the current one is about to be demonstrated next Tuesday. That’s when a former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, plans to join the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, at New York.They are expected to reject President Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” vision, issued last week.
“Look, there’s a lot of people who have tried to do this and failed,” Mr. Kushner told The New York Sun Thursday. “I find it almost pathetic when they criticize peoples’ efforts to try to solve it, because it comes from a lot of jealousy that they couldn’t get it done themselves.” He added that Mr. Olmert should help, “as opposed to trying to grab a headline when you’re irrelevant.”
In 2008, three years after Israel abandoned Gaza to the mercy of Hamas, Mr. Olmert presented a plan that would create of a Palestinian state in the entire West Bank, including parts of Jerusalem. The capital’s Old City, according to Mr. Olmert’s scheme, would have been placed under international supervision. Half a decade later, in an interview with Israel’s Channel 10 television, Mr. Olmert said he’d told Mr. Abbas, “Remember my words, it will be 50 years before there will be another Israeli prime minister that will offer you what I am offering you now. Don’t miss this opportunity.”
Mr. Abbas missed it. Mr. Olmert, moreover, was at the end of his political career, about to be convicted of corruption-related crimes for which he later spent time in jail. Recently Mr. Abbas said that under such circumstances, he had no choice but to reject Mr. Olmert’s offer.
Yet on Tuesday, the two men will conduct a joint press conference, bolstering each other’s rejection of the new American plan, which was prepared by Mr. Trump’s aide and son in law, Mr. Kushner.
Shortly afterwards Mr. Abbas plans to propose a to the United Nations Security Council a resolution that will, according to an initial draft seen by the Sun, express “regret” over the Kushner plan and determine it “breaches international law and the internationally-endorsed terms of reference for the achievement of a just, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
The American permanent representative at the United Nations, Kelly Craft, is expected to veto the proposed Palestinian resolution. So instead the Palestinians hope to pass later a non-binding resolution at the General Assembly. Ahead of the Turtle Bay maneuvering, Mr. Kushner came to New York Thursday to brief members of the Security Council on his plan.
After the meeting Mr. Kushner said the 15 members of the Security Council “want to see fresh thinking and they want to see progress.” He tried to convince them that Mr. Abbas’s habit of relying on United Nations resolutions, rather than building a state for the Palestinian people, is unproductive.
One paragraph in Mr. Kushner’s plan states that past resolutions of the United Nations and other institutions “have not and will not resolve the conflict.” Instead, they “have enabled political leaders to avoid addressing the complexities of this conflict rather than enabling a realistic path to peace.”
Not so Mr. Abbas. Before coming to the UN, he called for an emergency meeting of Arab League’s foreign ministers at Cairo. Then he gathered members of another group, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, in Riyadh. Both bodies, where opposition to Israel is the lowest common denominator, denounced the American plan.
At the same time, however, leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Arab countries reacted positively to Mr. Kushner’s peace plan. Moreover, the acting leader of one Arab country, Sudan, met Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at Entebbe this week. They agreed, for the first time, to work toward normalizing relations between the two countries. In another first, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates reportedly met with Mr, Netanyahu in December at the White House to discuss regional issues.
“The Arab leaders want to see this deal finished,” Mr. Kushner said, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. They also “want to normalize with Israel. And you’re seeing a lot of countries thinking about ways to take additional steps to do that, and we’ve been very strongly encouraging that.”
By contrast, he said, he had met Mr. Abbas four times. Rather than discussing details of the plan, Mr. Abbas disengaged, opting to incite for violence instead, Mr. Kushner said.
On Thursday, after Mr. Abbas called for a “non-violent” resistance to the plan, Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Jerusalem initiated several violent incidents that injured Israelis. Several Palestinians were killed when the Israeli army and Palestinian security forces tried to restore the calm.
“If you want to have a state, you have to show that you’re ready to have a functional state,” Mr. Kushner said. “I think that people who are ready to have a state don’t go out and call for days of rage and encourage people to pursue violence if they’re not getting what they want.”
As Mr. Olmert said back then, Mr. Kushner, too, believes that his plan is the last chance for peace between Israel and a Palestinian leadership. “I’m being pragmatic,” he said. “If you look at the rate of the expansion of Israeli settlements and if you look at the aspiration of the Palestinian people, you’re about to get to a crossroad where you almost can’t come back.”
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