Even some Trump allies want Kushner to ice his peace plan – Nahal Toosi - John Jason Fallows

Even some Trump allies want Kushner to ice his peace plan – Nahal Toosi –

Even some Trump allies want Kushner to ice his peace plan –

Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan isn’t even out yet, but there are already intensifying calls to scrap the rollout — including from some Trump allies.

Prominent conservative and pro-Israel voices close to the White House are increasingly sharing their fears, which range from the possibility that the peace proposal could trigger violence to worries that its offerings could forever kill efforts to craft a two-state solution. And some are going on the record to urge the Trump administration to set aside the plan indefinitely, even though many have not laid eyes on the closely held proposal.

“Releasing the plan now would make the U.S. seem unserious,” James Carafano, a senior foreign affairs scholar with the conservative Heritage Foundation who usually sides with the administration, said in an email. “It’s better to wait, perhaps even until after the U.S. elections.”

Trump himself conceded Sunday that Kushner’s proposal, which few people have seen, might not be workable, agreeing with an unvarnished private assessment Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave in a meeting last week that was recorded and leaked to The Washington Post.

If those assessments weren’t enough to doom the proposal, the deep skepticism from Middle East specialists from across the political spectrum would rob Kushner of powerful surrogates who could help sell it both domestically and abroad.

Among the most prominent Middle East observers urging Kushner to kill the proposal is Rob Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank that generally advocates hawkish pro-Israel policies.

In op-eds, Satloff, who describes himself as a nonpartisan independent, has warned of a negative chain reaction that could follow the plan’s release. For instance, if Palestinians reject the plan, Israelis on the right could pressure their government to go ahead and annex parts of the West Bank. Such a move, he said, would further isolate Israel on the world stage and effectively weaken its ability to counter Iran.

“Issuing the Middle East peace plan in the current environment is a lose-lose-lose proposition,” Satloff wrote April 10 in Foreign Policy.

“For now, Rob is right — they definitely shouldn’t release it now,” said a Middle East analyst at a conservative think tank, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

“This plan is doomed,” added Ilan Goldenberg of the Center for a New American Security, who worked on Israeli-Palestinian issues while serving in the Democratic Obama administration.

For their part, Kushner and other aides to Trump appear intent on going full speed ahead.

Kushner, who is also Trump’s son-in-law, is expected to unveil an economic component of the peace proposal at a conference later this month in Bahrain. The Trump administration is hoping to bring investment to the Palestinian territories as part of a broader agreement between the two sides. A number of leading Arab countries, as well as Israel, plan to attend the conference, set for June 25-26. The Palestinians, however, are boycotting.

“We look forward to presenting our ambitious and exciting economic vision in Bahrain,” an administration official told POLITICO.

White House officials have said they will release the political aspects of the plan — covering major topics such as whether Palestinian refugees will be allowed to return to Gaza, the West Bank and perhaps other disputed territories — at an unspecified later date. Kushner has already indicated the proposal will not include the phrase “two-state solution,” suggesting the Palestinians will not be offered their own country.

Few details of the peace proposal have been released to anyone outside the White House, let alone the public. But the Trump administration’s actions thus far have convinced Palestinian leaders that the plan will not offer much of interest for them.

Already, the Trump administration has cut financial aid to the Palestinians, shut their offices in Washington and recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — a rebuke to the Palestinians, who claim parts of Jerusalem as their future capital. Trump officials also have remained silent about longtime Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hints that he may move to annex parts or all of the West Bank.

These moves have also raised unease among America’s Arab allies, who, despite their desire to maintain good ties to the Trump team, fear alienating their own populations if they turn their back on the majority Muslim Palestinians.

“A diplomatic initiative this ham-handed, in a context where the U.S. administration has gone out of its way to alienate and pressure one side while aligning its own political fortunes with the other, and in which regional governments whose support for peace is crucial are asking real questions about American credibility — well, that’s destined for failure,” said Tamara Cofman Wittes, a Middle East analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Should Kushner reveal even the economic piece of the plan later this month, it could affect the electoral prospects of Netanyahu, a close Trump ally who has cheered many of his seemingly anti-Palestinian moves.

Kushner had originally held off on unveiling the plan until after Israel’s April 9 elections, counting on Netanyahu’s party to win the election. Netanyahu emerged victorious, but he was unable to form a governing coalition in the required time frame, spurring the need for a new election.

The Trump administration has already had to repeatedly delay the proposal’s release, a fact Pompeo acknowledged in his private remarks last week, saying the process “has taken us longer … than I had originally thought it might — to put it lightly.”

And putting off the release until after the new Israeli election comes with the risk could run into the U.S. election calendar as the 2020 race for the White House heats up. As a result, officials may wager they have little to lose by at least offering up the economic portion of the proposal.

Some Middle East specialists say Kushner should release the plan by the fall. At the very least, it could serve as an “aspirational” document that future negotiators could plumb for ideas.

“The administration issuing their plan … should have value as setting down a guidepost for when the environment for a deal is more suitable,” said Michael Makovsky, the president of the right-leaning Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

Some added that by dragging it out too long, the administration is risking embarrassment.

“It’s hard for me to imagine this administration, with all of the anticipation leading up to this, not releasing the plan,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a senior vice president for research at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “It’s too hard for them to walk back.”

But others say no plan is better than one destined for defeat.

Aaron David Miller, who has worked on Israeli-Palestinian issues for both Republican and Democratic presidents, noted that President Bill Clinton told him that trying and failing was better not trying at all in the run up the 2000 Camp David summit. But those talks ended without an agreement, and the Israeli-Palestinian relationship still hasn’t fully recovered, Miller said.

“Failure, particularly repeated failure, costs and can make matters much worse,” he said. “Kushner should take a deep breath, lie down and wait quietly until the rush to put the ultimate deal on table passes. Go back to drawing board and make sure what you’re proposing is equitable, durable and in the end advances, not crushes, U.S. credibility.”

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine

– June 3, 2019 at 04:38PM

The post Even some Trump allies want Kushner to ice his peace plan – Nahal Toosi appeared first on John Jason Fallows.

– June 3, 2019 at 05:24PM