Both United States President Donald Trump and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas released upbeat statements over the prospects for a renewed peace push between the Israelis and Palestinians after their first meeting on Wednesday. In typical Trump fashion, without outlying any specifics, he said he was “going to get it done”. The renewed peace push comes after consistent and failed attempts to broker peace by every single previous US administration.
Although sentiment on both the Palestinian and Israeli streets is extremely apathetic towards the possibility of achieving peace, statements from the Palestinian leadership have struck a surprisingly optimistic tone. Palestinian leaders are saying they think Trump might be the one — with the right mix of bombast and unpredictability — to restart peace negotiations.
“We are glad that now the US administration listens about us from us, and not from third parties,” Abbas recently noted.
Trump has already done the ground work, apparently, as former real estate attorney-turned-Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, visited occupied Jerusalem and Ramallah in March to explore the possibilities. Greenblatt said he got good marks from both sides. The push for peace comes at a particularly volatile time amid a massive hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners, increased Israeli land grabs and an uptick in violence. Trump has an important responsibility to back his words up with actions and the coming months should give the parties better indications of just how he plans to achieve a deal, which he has termed as “historic”.
Also important, Trump should not make good on his campaign promise to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Occupied Jerusalem — a move that would surely kill the talks before they even started.
