Trump blasts Abbas over incitement

DONALD Trump screamed at his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank last week, an Israeli TV network has reported.

“You tricked me in DC,” he said, according to Channel 2 journalist Udi Segal. “The Israelis showed me your involvement in incitement.”

Trump was seemingly referring to the White House summit he held with Abbas in early May, where the Palestinian leader said that Palestinian children are raised “on a culture of peace.”

During his visit to Israel and the West Bank last week, Trump seemed to be optimistic about Abbas political credentials and his commitment to peace, even commenting that “the Palestinians are ready to reach for peace.”

But according to Segal, behind closed doors things were very different. The meeting that Trump held with Abbas reportedly turned icy cold for several minutes after Trump fumed about incitement. Senior Palestinian Authority officials have claimed that the report is fabricated

Incitement is a subject that Israel lobbies hard about on the international stage. Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a meeting with Romanian Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu to decry Abbas for his claims in Washington about the Palestinian culture of peace. “They name their schools after mass murderers of Israelis and they pay terrorists,” Netanyahu protested.

There was a clue, in the public comments that Trump made alongside Abbas, that the incitement issue was on the agenda. “Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded and even rewarded,” Trump said, in a swipe at his host. “We must be resolute in condemning such acts in a single, unified voice.”

Speculation is high regarding what steps Trump will take, now that he is back home, to push forward the peace deal that he spoke about repeatedly during his trip last week. Some Knesset politicians say that they are hearing from Arab countries that Trump has a real chance at making peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Zionist Union MP Hilik Bar told The AJN after meeting representatives of various Arab states, “I heard from Arab representatives a very strong will to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict and renew negotiations,” he said after attending an international conference in Mongolia and talking to Iraqis, Moroccans and others. “They said that many members of the Arab League will want to see an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.”

Bar said that from what he is hearing, Trump is right that Arab states are becoming more open to Israel and this presents a rare opportunity for progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bar said that Arab states that he encountered in Mongolia see Trump as a strong leader who could be able to get the two sides to agree to a deal in a way that Barack Obama could not.

NATHAN JEFFAY