Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Jordan’s King Abdullah in Amman, to discuss the situation in the region ahead of an expected release of the Trump Administration’s Middle East peace plan. A White House official told reporters last month that Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, were working on the most detailed set of proposals to date for the long-awaited peace initiative, which would include what the administration is calling ‘a robust economic plan.’ That said, there is thus far no release date for the American initiative.
According to a puzzle of reports, the plan – which President Donald Trump dubbed as “the deal of the century” – is expected to diverge from the Arab Peace Initiative drawn up by Saudi Arabia in 2002 in which Arab nations offered Israel to normalize relations in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians and a full Israeli withdrawal from territories it captured in 1967, which also includes east Jerusalem. The deviation of the Arab Peace Initiative has hardened the position of the Arab world, which underscored on multiple occasions that they won’t accept any deal that does not include east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Following the meeting of President Abbas and King Abdullah, the Palestinian leader emphasized that neither the Palestinians, nor the Jordanians, would accept the American peace plan. He stated, “These days there are many issues related to the “Deal of the Century” which we both reject. Also (issues relating) to the Israeli position, to the inter-Palestinian reconciliation, we must exchange thoughts on all these issues as well as the bilateral relationship between us and Jordan,” Abbas told reporters in the Jordanian capital.
Palestinian President Abbas is expected to visit Qatar in the next few days, as part of a series of meetings he had scheduled for the purpose of garnering the Arab world’s support in rejecting any initiative formulated by the United States.