THE HAGUE — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday defended the Trump administration’s pending Israeli-Palestinian peace plan as beneficial to both sides, even as he stood by leaked comments that some in the region will see the plan as overly deferential to Israel.
“I could see how someone might be concerned that a plan that this administration put forward might — without knowing the true facts of what is contained in the plan — they might perceive that it was going to be fundamentally one-sided,” said Mr. Pompeo, currently conducting a diplomatic tour of Europe before joining President Trump’s state visit to Britain.
The perception, he added, “is just simply not true.”
Mr. Pompeo, in an interview Monday with Sinclair Broadcast Group before traveling from Switzerland to The Hague, was discussing the response to comments he made last week during a closed-door meeting with Jewish leaders.
“One might argue” that the forthcoming peace plan is “unexecutable” and might not gain traction, Mr. Pompeo told the group, according to leaked audio obtained by The Washington Post over the weekend. “It may be rejected. Could be in the end [that] folks will say, ’It’s not particularly original, it doesn’t particularly work for me,’ that is, ’It’s got two good things and nine bad things, I’m out.’”
Mr. Pompeo did not dispute the authenticity of the recording, but sought to clarify his remarks.
“I think there will be things in this plan that lots of people like, and I am confident … there will be something in there that everyone will [be] concerned with,” he said.
Asked about the comments, President Trump told reporters Sunday that Mr. Pompeo “may be right” that people will think the forthcoming plan will be one-sided in favor of Israel.
“I mean, most people would say that,” Mr. Trump told reporters has he departed Washington for London.
Speculation has been rampant regarding the yet-to-be-released peace plan, which is being developed by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.
Economic aspects of the plan are to be made public later this month at a conference in Bahrain. Mr. Kushner and other administration officials have spent the past two years quietly pursuing back-channel communications with wealthy Gulf Arab powers and Palestinian business leaders in preparation for the much-anticipated rollout of the plan aimed at an Israeli-Palestinian agreement that Mr. Trump himself has called the “deal of the century.”
Sources have told The Washington Times that the Trump administration has launched an exhaustive push to secure vast financial commitments for the Palestinians from Saudi Arabia and others. A key unanswered question whether the plan will abandon the idea of a two-state solution, one long central to U.S. peace efforts between the Israelis and Palestinians.
In an interview with Axios on HBO that aired Sunday, Mr. Kushner suggested that his personal view is that the Palestinians are not yet able to govern themselves. “The hope is that they over time will become capable of governing,” he said in the interview, according to Bloomberg.
In response on Monday, veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, a close and longtime adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, leveled sharp criticism at Mr. Kushner. “[He] is very much indifferent about Palestinians,” Mr. Erekat said. “He has disqualified himself from any role in the peacemaking.”
Mr. Erekat added that he is calling on “all Arabs” not to engage in talks with Mr. Kushner or other Trump administration officials working on the forthcoming peace plan, asserting that the officials are only looking out for the interest of Jewish settlers on the West Bank.
In his own interview with Sinclair on Monday, Mr. Pompeo said the administration’s idea “is to present a vision and to continue to work towards a very, very difficult situation’s conclusion.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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