The Trump administration’s foreign policy, such as it is, now seems in full clusterflop mode with respect to their Middle East diplomacy initiative.
The Trump Administration’s half-baked plan to dispatch Jared Kushner to Israel, Iraq and Saudi Arabia to achieve Middle East peace has ended today in a blaze of mystifying but predictably poor decisions.
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America’s traditional role as an honest broker in the region is diminished by the latest Trump Administration blunder, which has been magnified by the literal closeness of inexperienced “diplomat” Jared Kushner to Israel’s arch-conservative Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and to Saudi Arabia’s young, all-powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Jared was apparently doing shuttle diplomacy that was supposed to deploy Dina Powell, deputy NatSec advisor as a “secret weapon” and seems configured like a Hail Mary in the midst of #TrumpRussia. Or is it another shiny object to divert attention or wag dogs.
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U.S. has threatened to close PLO office in Washington
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Palestinian officials say move could undermine peace efforts
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered a halt to all contacts with the U.S. after it threatened to close his authority’s mission in Washington, and won’t allow the issue to be used as leverage in any Middle East peace talks, a senior Palestinian official said.
Abbas’s office sent a note to government departments and embassies stating that “any meeting with an American official is banned regardless of the reason until they back down and treat us fairly,” Azzam Al-Ahmad, a member of the Palestinian Authority administration, said late on Monday. The suspension of contacts doesn’t amount to severing diplomatic relations, he said.
The Trump government put the Palestinians on notice on Friday that it will close the office unless they enter serious peace talks with Israel. The move came after the State Department determined the Palestinians had breached a provision stipulating their presence in the U.S. capital would be terminated if they sought to prosecute Israelis at the International Criminal Court.
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