Arab foreign ministers welcome US Mideast mediation

The Palestinian, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers expressed support Saturday for US Middle East peace efforts, at a Cairo meeting ahead of a White House delegation visit to the region.
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Egypt’s foreign minister had said earlier this week the three would meet to coordinate ahead of the visit by the US delegation that includes presidential adviser Jared Kushner and Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt.
On Saturday, the ministers said in a joint statement they “appreciated the American role to achieve peace” between the Israelis and Palestinians.
They “look forward to the US administration intensifying its efforts in the coming period”.
Talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been at a standstill since the failure of US mediation in the spring of 2014.
US President Donald Trump, who visited Israel and the West Bank in May, has said he believes he can mediate a final peace agreement that has eluded his predecessors.
Last week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he welcomed the upcoming visit.
“Trump will soon be sending [senior adviser and son-in-law] Jared Kushner and [Special Envoy for International Negotiations] Jason Greenblatt for talks in the region, and of course Jerusalem, in an effort to jump-start a diplomatic process,” Netanyahu told his ministers at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. The two will be joined by Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy Dina Powell.
“We of course will welcome them as always,” he said.
Last week, a White House official told the Times of Israel that Trump believes an “opportunity” has opened up to advance his peace initiative and was sending senior administration officials to the region in the coming days.
Kushner, Greenblatt and Powell will meet with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The decision to send the delegation was made after consultations with a cohort of the president’s top advisers, including newly installed Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.
The senior administration official said that Trump sees an opportunity to push ahead with his attempts to renew negotiations.
“He believes that the restoration of calm and the stabilized situation in Jerusalem after the recent crisis on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif has created an opportunity to continue discussions and the pursuit of peace that began early in his administration,” the official told The Times of Israel.
Trump has asked his delegation to focus the talks on this trip around several broad themes, inclusive finding “a path to substantive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, combating extremism [and dealing with] the situation in Gaza, including how to ease the humanitarian crisis there.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) and US President Donald Trump seen at Ben Gurion International Airport prior to the latter’s departure from Israel on May 23, 2017. (Koby Gideon/GPO)
They are also instructed to discuss “strengthening our relations with regional partners and the economic steps that can be taken both now and after a peace deal is signed to ensure security, stability and prosperity for the region,” the official added.
The announcement comes as numerous Palestinian leaders have started to criticize the US since the crisis in a seeming retreat from the warm embrace they engaged in when Trump visited the West Bank in May.
The latest announcement also comes after off-the-record remarks by Kushner — made to a casual gathering of congressional interns — were leaked to the media in which he said there may not be a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And yet, Kushner also stressed that the administration would strive to broker a deal and find a workable solution.
“We’re going to focus on it and try to come to the right conclusion in the near future,” he said, but noted that he wasn’t sure the US could offer the parties “anything unique.”
He also made remarks that seemed to side with Israel on its handling of the latest flare-up surrounding the Jerusalem holy site.
After a July 14 terror attack in which three Arab Israelis shot dead two Israeli police officers with weapons they had smuggled onto the Temple Mount, Israel installed new security measures, including metal detectors and cameras, which set off near-daily clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces in and around the Old City, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Israeli border police officers stand guard next to the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City Thursday, July 27, 2017. (AP /Mahmoud Illean)
Israeli border police officers stand guard next to the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City Thursday, July 27, 2017. (AP /Mahmoud Illean)
It also triggered a boycott by Muslim worshipers who threatened not to return to the site until all the installations were removed.
Kushner said the incident showed how “combustible” the conflict was, while he also went on to defend actions Israel took after the attack, saying Israel’s security measures were “not an irrational thing to do.”
“They say look, you know, this is a change to the status quo. The Temple Mount is an [unintelligible] occupation of Israel, and Israel was saying we don’t want anything to do with that, we just want to make sure people are safe,” he said. “And that really incited a lot of tension in the streets.

source:AFP