President Trump pledged Wednesday to give “everything within my heart and within my soul” to forge a Middle East peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, while Vice President Mike Pence called on the United Nations to stop encouraging anti-Semitism against Israel.
During a meeting with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Trump praised the Palestinian negotiators for “working very hard” toward achieving a peace deal.
“I will do everything within my heart and within my soul to get that deal made,” Mr. Trump told reporters in New York on the sidelines of U.N. meetings. “Israel is working very hard. Who knows, stranger things have happened. I think we have a pretty good shot — maybe the best shot ever.”
Mr. Abbas said it would be “the deal of the century.” He said the Trump administration’s negotiators, including White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and special envoy Jason Greenblatt, have met with the Palestinians more than 20 times in eight months.
“We are very certain that you, Mr. President, are determined to reach real peace in the Middle East,” he told Mr. Trump. “And this gives us the assurance and the confidence that we are on the verge of real peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.”
Mr. Abbas noted that the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah was taking place this week within 24 hours of Muslims celebrating the new Islamic year.
“And this is a very sweet coincidence that we can celebrate the new year together within a 24-hour period, and if this is an indication to anything, it means that we can coexist peacefully together,” he said.
Later Mr. Abbas called on the U.N. to pursue efforts to “bring an end to Israeli occupation of the state of Palestine within a set time frame.”
He warned the U.N. General Assembly that if the two-state solution is abandoned, Palestinians would have no choice but to “continue the struggle and demand full rights for all inhabitants of historic Palestine.”
While Mr. Trump was again taking a direct role in encouraging the Palestinians and Israelis to talk, Mr. Pence was challenging the U.N. to end what he dubbed its “forum for anti-Semitism” against Israel and to boot repressive countries off of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
In a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Mr. Pence noted that President John F. Kennedy had warned the world body 50 years ago not to become a “forum for invective.”
“Yet today its Human Rights Council has become exactly that — a forum for anti-Semitism and invective against Israel,” Mr. Pence said. “We call on the Security Council and this entire body to immediately reform the membership and practices of the Human Rights Council — and end the Human Rights Council’s blatant bias against our cherished ally, Israel.”
Mr. Pence said the Human Rights Council, which includes countries such as Cuba and Venezuela, has approved more than 70 resolutions condemning Israel “while largely ignoring the world’s worst human rights abusers.”
“Cuba sits on the Human Rights Council — an oppressive regime that has repressed its people and jailed political opponents for more than a half-century,” Mr. Pence said. “Venezuela sits on the Human Rights Council — a dictatorship that undermines democracy at every turn, imprisons its political opponents.”
He said the U.N. “must reform the Council’s membership and its operation.”
On Tuesday President Trump called the Human Rights Council “a massive source of embarrassment.”
“The truth is, the Human Rights Council doesn’t deserve its name,” Mr. Pence said.
The meeting was focused on reforming U.N. peacekeeping operations, and the vice president said such actions require the U.N.’s “willingness to call out senseless attacks on innocent people around the world.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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