The Trump administration has said peace between Israel and the Palestinians may not come in the form of a two-state solution – a dramatic shift from the stance of Barack Obama, who said he saw no alternative.
Speaking to reporters ahead of Donald Trump’s meeting on Wednesday with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a senior White House official said Trump was eager to begin facilitating a peace deal between the two sides and hoped to bring them together soon.
But the official, who previewed the visit on condition of anonymity, said it would be up to the Israelis and Palestinians to determine what peace entailed.
“If I ask five people what a two-state solution is, I get eight different answers,” the official said.
“A two-state solution that doesn’t bring peace is not a goal that anybody wants to achieve. Peace is the goal, whether it comes in the form of a two-state solution, if that’s what the parties want, or something else.
“If that’s what the parties want, we’re going to help them. We’re not going to dictate what the terms of peace will be.”
During his final White House news conference, Obama warned that the moment for a two-state solution “may be passing” and said the “status quo is unsustainable”.
Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House, then head to Capitol Hill for meetings with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, the House Speaker, Paul Ryan, and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer.
Obama controversially broke with decades of US policy in the waning days of his administration by declining to veto an anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations. The resolution, which declared Israel’s presence in all of East Jerusalem and the West Bank illegal – including the Western Wall – represented a significant shift in US policy on the peace process and the final status of Jerusalem. Obama had previously vetoed a similar resolution in 2011.
Trump takes pride in his deal-making skills and said during his campaign that he would love the challenge of negotiating a Middle East agreement. At one point Trump pointed to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as the best man for the job.
Kushner is a New York real estate developer without any political experience prior to his father-in-law’s presidential bid.
The summit takes place the day before David Friedman, Trump’s choice for ambassador to Israel, faces confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill, and the day after the resignation of his national security adviser, Mike Flynn.
The official said Trump and Netanyahu were likely to discuss peace as well as expanded Israeli settlements, Iran, and Trump’s campaign pledge to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Although Trump had ardently advocated the relocation of the embassy on the campaign trail, he has backed away in recent days. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, Trump said: “I am thinking about the embassy, I am studying the embassy [issue], and we will see what happens.”
In the same interview Trump also struck a cautious note about the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. “They [settlements] don’t help the process. I can say that. There is so much land left. And every time you take land for settlements there is less land left,” said the American president.
“I am not somebody that believes that going forward with these settlements is a good thing for peace.”
