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Trump team trying to persuade doubters over 'peace plan'

March 13, 2019 at 11:30 am

Palestinian women demonstrate against Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ in Gaza City, Gaza on 6 March 2019 [Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency]

White House officials have been busy since the start of the year meeting critics of the Trump administration’s approach to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, reported Haaretz, in an attempt to prepare the ground for the unveiling of the so-called “peace plan”.

According to the paper, the “small team” working on the proposals is looking to see whether it “is possible to convince people to support a plan without telling them what’s in it”.

The Trump administration’s efforts “have included meetings with heads of Arab countries, leaders of American evangelical churches, former US officials who have worked on past peace plans and analysts at different Washington think tanks”, Haaretz reported.

“They’ve been talking to everyone ever since the beginning of this year,” said one person who has had multiple meetings with officials recently.

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“It looks like this time they are really preparing to put out something.”

Joel Rosenberg, an evangelical author, told Haaretz that participants in meetings with Trump officials were told the peace plan will not harm Israel’s security, but “that both sides won’t like some parts of it, and there isn’t going to be movement toward peace without some compromises”.

Haaretz noted that “throughout all of these conversations, public and private, almost no specifics of the plan itself have leaked out”.

“This is mostly a result of the administration’s insistence to share almost no concrete details about the content of the proposal, and instead use the meetings to emphasize its general commitment to Israel’s security and the advancement of a peace plan,” the paper added.