APN to Trump: Brokering Peace Calls for Vision, Strategy, Determination and Action

If Israel and the Palestinians can forge an agreement, it could “begin a process of peace all throughout the Middle East”, Mr Trump said.

President Trump wraps Mideast trip after Bethlehem, Jerusalem meetingsU.S. President Donald Trump wrapped up his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Tuesday after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and delivering a keynote address in Jerusalem. Turning to the prime minister, who joined him for the speech, Trump said, “Benjamin Netanyahu wants peace”.

Sooner rather than later, Trump will find that after many failed attempts by his predecessors, brokering peace between Israelis and Palestinians requires more than pomp and platitudes.

“The president was very forceful in his encouragement to both of them to be serious about approaching these discussions in the future and recognize you have to compromise”, Tillerson said in Rome, where he was accompanying Trump on his first overseas trip as president.

Trump attacked Iran throughout the day, saying, “Instead of being thankful, saying thank you” for the nuclear deal, Iranians “now feel emboldened”, with signs of Tehran’s fighters, money and weapons in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

A scandal-plagued member of parliament from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, Oren Hazan, managed to gain access to the red carpet and greet Trump upon his arrival.

He also expressed his wishes for Trump to be the U.S. president who succeeds in brokering peace between Palestinians and Israelis. More likely, Netanyahu said, that bomber “would have received a stipend from the Palestinian Authority“. “Never mentioned the word Israel”, Trump reiterated.

Abbas stressed that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not between religions.

Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza launched a general strike Monday to protest President Trump’s visit and to show solidarity with Palestinian prisoners now on hunger strike in Israeli jails.

In his remarks, Abbas said he has no problem with Judaism.

“The majority of the people of Israel, unlike the media, they love us, so we tell them how you are courageous and they love you”, Sara Netanyahu said to Trump and his wife.

The global community regards all Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories as illegal and a major obstacle to Middle East peace.

A longtime businessman, Trump has cast Middle East peace as the “ultimate deal” and has tasked his son-in-law Jared Kushner and former real estate lawyer Jason Greenblatt with charting a course forward.

“From the Palestinian leadership’s perspective, I don’t think their definition of peace fits within what most of us at least here in Congress and in the United States would define as peace”.

“Never underestimate how much attention these losers and cowards are paying to their reaction in the media”, McCain said. The area, captured by Israel in 1967, is not sovereign Israeli territory and Palestinians there are not Israeli citizens and do not have the right to vote. “Some estimates say that more than 95 percent of the victims of terrorism, are themselves Muslims”, President Trump said in Riyadh on Sunday as he spoke to Arab and Muslim leaders.