US envoy to Israel:

Palestinian state won’t emerge in near future

US envoy to Israel says while US President Donald Trump’s so-called 'peace plan' for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ostensibly calls for a two-state solution, the administration doesn’t expect the establishment of a Palestinian state in the near future.

News ID: 448746

Date: 31 January 2020 - 10:12

RNA - David Friedman made the remarks in a closed-door briefing with a group of American Jewish and Christian Evangelical leaders on Wednesday, according to sources in the gathering, the Times of Israel reported.

“Ambassador Friedman said it will still take a considerable amount of time for the Palestinians to build the institutions they need to have a state that’s fully functioning and that’s part of why they have this four-year timeline in the plan,” said a US Jewish official who was in the meeting.

Defying international outcry, Trump on Tuesday announced the general provisions of the plan that he has dubbed “the deal of century” at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side.

The scheme provides for an eventual Palestinian state in much of the occupied West Bank, minus the Jordan Valley and a network of enclaves carved out to include all of Israel’s settlements and slivers of land connecting them.

The plan also places Jerusalem al-Quds under complete Israeli control, offering the Palestinians a capital only on the eastern outskirts of the occupied city.

All Palestinian groups have angrily rejected the plan, with President Mahmoud Abbas saying “a thousand no’s” to Trump's proposed deal, which will belong in "the garbage can of history."

Backtracking on his Tuesday’s remarks that Tel Aviv would be free to annex West Bank settlements immediately, Friedman said Wednesday that a joint US-Israeli committee would have to approve the parameters of any such moves.

He said that applying Israeli law to all settlements in the occupied West Bank is a "process that requires some effort."

847/940