Trump said to ask Netanyahu whether he genuinely wants peace with Palestinians
United States President Donald Trump is reported to have flatly asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year whether or not he genuinely cared about making peace with the Palestinians.
According to the Axios news website, Trump’s blunt inquiry was made during a phone call between the two leaders last year, just after Netanyahu gave his approval to new settlement construction projects in the West Bank.
The report, which cited three unnamed sources said familiar with the call, said that Trump “thought [Netanyahu] was unnecessarily angering the Palestinians” and in an off-script interjection that came “in the course of a longer conversation that was mostly friendly and complimentary”, the US President “bluntly asked [Netanyahu] whether or not he genuinely wants peace.”
The report offered no details on Netanyahu’s response to the question.
Responding to Axios, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump “has great relationships with a number of foreign leaders but that doesn’t mean he can’t be aggressive when it comes to negotiating what’s best for America.”
She did not respond to the specific contents of the leaders’ conversation.
Trump has tasked his administration with negotiating “the ultimate deal” between Israel and the Palestinians that would bring to an end one of the most protracted conflicts in the Middle East.
The US president previously called into question the commitment of both Israel and the Palestinians to making peace, and said that Israeli settlement building in the West Bank complicates peacemaking efforts — a slight backtrack on his previous position that settlements do not pose an obstacle to reaching a deal.
After a year of shuttle talks with Israelis and Palestinians by his personal peace envoys Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kushner, the US reportedly has formulated a yet-to-be-revealed peace proposal.
But US peacemaking efforts were dealt a serious blow after the Palestinians suspended contacts with Washington over Trump’s December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and his pledge to relocate the US embassy there.
The US move broke with decades of international consensus that the city’s status should be settled as part of a two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Ties between the US and Palestinians soured further after Trump suspended $65 million in funding to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has vowed to reject out of hand any proposal put forward by the US, dismissing them as balanced mediators in the wake of the Jerusalem decision.