World
U.S. economic plan decried by Palestinians but gets cautious nod in Gulf
By Itzhak Rabihiya
Palestinians protest Trump's $50 billion investment plan to help achieve Mideast peace, while
Palestinians on Wednesday poured scorn on the Trump administration’s $50 billion investment plan to help achieve Middle East peace, but U.S. Gulf Arab allies said the economic initiative had promise if a political settlement is reached – Reuters reports today (27.6.2019)
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the plan’s main architect, sought to build support for his ambitious economic proposals for the Palestinian territories at an international meeting in
Neither the Israeli nor Palestinian governments attended the two-day gathering that took place amid a years-long stalemate in other international efforts to resolve a conflict that has lasted more than seven decades.
Kushner’s plan calls for scores of business and infrastructure projects that he says are aimed at boosting the West Bank and
But with the Palestinian leadership saying Kushner’s economic framework ignores their aspirations for statehood, senior Palestine Liberation Organisation official Hanan Ashrawi said the
The Palestinians and many Arabs in the region have dismissed Kushner’s plan for a trade and investment boost as pointless without a political deal. Arab states, including
Kushner said the conference proved that the economic issues of the conflict were “solvable” but he offered no details on the yet-to-released political part of his peace drive being crafted largely in secrecy. “The reason why we thought it was important to bring out the economic vision before the political vision is because we need people to see what the future can look like,” said Kushner, who has conceded that its success hinges on reaching a long-elusive peace agreement.“We’re going to put out our political plan at the right time and we’ll see what happens,” he told reporters as the event wound up on Wednesday.
Kushner, Trump’s senior White House adviser, said that in negotiations both sides have to decide when they get to “yes”, adding: “Maybe they will never get to yes.”
Several thousand Palestinians demonstrated in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and burned posters of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “No to the conference of treason, no to the conference of shame” read one banner. The chief of the Islamist Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, criticized the plan as a ruse against the Palestinian people. “This money must not come at the expense of our enduring rights, or at the expense of
Several Arab states, including
Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and the
Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa told Israeli public broadcaster
Kushner has said the plan would not adhere to the Arab initiative. It is not clear whether the Trump team plans to abandon the two-state solution, which is backed by the United Nations and most countries. Trump’s team has consistently refused to commit to it.
Any solution must settle long-standing issues such as the status of
Palestinian leaders are refusing to engage with the White House, accusing it of pro-Israel bias. Breaking with the international consensus, Trump in 2017 recognized
The IMF puts unemployment at 30% in the West Bank and 50% in
“
Palestinian businessman Ashraf Jabari, chairman of the Palestinian Business Network, told the gathering it was difficult to build an economy with a “siege and unstable situation”. “Frankly, we demand an independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967,” said the businessman from Hebron, who has co-founded a trade group to boost business between Palestinians and Israeli settlers.
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