Trump, Meeting With Netanyahu, Backs Away From Palestinian State
Source: New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Wednesday that the United States would no longer insist on a Palestinian state as part of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, backing away from a policy that has underpinned America’s role in Middle East peacemaking since the Clinton administration.
“I’m looking at two states and one state,” Mr. Trump said, appearing in a joint news conference at the White House with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “I like the one that both parties like. I can live with either one.”
Mr. Trump’s comments were a striking departure from decades of diplomatic orthodoxy, and they raised a host of thorny questions about the viability of his position. The Palestinians are highly unlikely to accept anything short of a sovereign state, and a single Israeli state encompassing the Palestinians would either become undemocratic or no longer Jewish, given the faster growth rate of the Arab population. Mr. Trump did not address these dynamics, preferring to focus on his confidence that he could produce a breakthrough agreement. “I think we’re going to make a deal,” Mr. Trump said, describing that as personally important to him. “It might be a better deal than people in this room understand.”
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Mr. Trump also used the news conference to again lash out at the nation’s intelligence agencies, saying that his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, had been brought down by illegal leaks to the news media. His comments came on a day of new disclosures about Mr. Flynn’s dealings with Russia during and after the presidential campaign. Mr. Trump demanded his security adviser’s resignation, officials said.
“From intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s a criminal action, criminal act, and it’s been going on for a long time before me, but now it’s really going on. And people are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/world/middleeast/benjamin-netanyahu-israel-trump.html?
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