An American withdrawal from peace - Haaretz Editorial
It’s true that his predecessors also didn’t impose a settlement, but at least since the 2000 Camp David summit they mediated between the parties
Haaretz Editorial Dec 07, 2017
read more: ▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/1.827389
U.S. President Donald Trump has given a valuable political gift to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s strugging amid the corruption investigations against him and is trying to maintain the stability of his governing coalition, which is being led by the Habayit Hayehudi party headed by Naftali Bennett.
In his White House address Wednesday, Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – a declaration that all his predecessors had avoided since the state was established in 1948. In the same breath, he diluted the American commitment to the two-state solution, which he conditioned on the agreement of the parties. More importantly, Trump promised that the United States wouldn’t present a position on the contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians, above all the borders of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem.
Trump awarded Netanyahu an unprecedented diplomatic achievement, even as he postponed fulfillment of his campaign promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. At the same time, he calmed Netanyahu’s fears about presenting an American diktat for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement that might have unraveled the prime minister’s coalition, which rejects the two-state solution or any gesture toward the Palestinians. It’s no wonder that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responded with great disappointment to Trump’s remarks and called for an international front against the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.