President
Donald Trump prepared to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on
Wednesday for talks that could shape the contours of future Middle East policy,
as
Palestinians warned the White House not to abandon their goal of an
independent state.
For decades,
the idea of creating a Palestine living peacefully alongside Israel has been a
bedrock U.S. position, though the last negotiations broke down in 2014.
But in a
potential shift, a senior White House official said on Tuesday that peace did
not necessarily have to entail Palestinian statehood, and Trump would not try
to "dictate" a solution.
As Trump and
Netanyahu prepared to meet, a senior Palestinian official disclosed that on
Tuesday, CIA director Mike Pompeo held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government in the occupied West
Bank.
"(It was)
the first official meeting with a high-profile member of the American
administration since Trump took office," said the official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity and declined to disclose details of the discussion.
Netanyahu
committed, with conditions, to the two-state goal in a speech in 2009 and has
broadly reiterated the aim since. But he has also spoken of a "state
minus" option, suggesting he could offer the Palestinians deep-seated
autonomy and the trappings of statehood without full sovereignty.
Palestinians
reacted with alarm to the possibility that Washington might ditch its support
for an independent Palestinian nation.
"If the
Trump Administration rejects this policy it would be destroying the chances for
peace and undermining American interests, standing and credibility
abroad," Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation
Organization, said in response to the U.S. official's remarks.
"Accommodating
the most extreme and irresponsible elements in Israel and in the White House is
no way to make responsible foreign policy," she said in a statement.
Husam Zomlot,
strategic adviser to Abbas, said the Palestinians had not received any official
indication of a change in the U.S. stance.
"NO
GAPS"
For Netanyahu,
the talks with Trump will be an opportunity to reset ties after a frequently
combative relationship with Democrat Barack Obama.
The prime
minister, under investigation at home over allegations of abuse of office,
spent much of Tuesday huddled with advisers in Washington preparing for the
talks. Officials said they wanted no gaps to emerge between U.S. and Israeli
thinking during the scheduled two-hour Oval Office meeting.
Trump, who has
been in office less than four weeks and has already been immersed in problems
including the forced resignation of his national security adviser, brings with
him an unpredictability that Netanyahu's staff hope will not impinge on the
discussions.
During last
year's election campaign, Republican candidate Trump was relentlessly
pro-Israel in his rhetoric, promising to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem, backing David Friedman, an ardent supporter of Jewish settlements,
as his Israeli envoy and saying that he would not put pressure on Israel to
negotiate with the Palestinians.
That tune,
which was music to Netanyahu's ears and to the increasingly restive right-wing
within his coalition, has since changed, making Wednesday's talks critical for
clarity.
Trump appears
to have put the embassy move on the backburner, at least for now, after
warnings about the potential for regional unrest, including from Jordan's King
Abdullah.
And rather
than giving Israel free rein on settlements, the White House has said building
new ones or expanding existing ones beyond their current borders would not be
helpful to peace.
That would
appear to leave Israel room to build within existing settlements without
drawing U.S. condemnation, in what is the sort of gray area the talks are
expected to touch on.
For the
Palestinians, and much of the rest of the world, settlements built on occupied
land are illegal under international law. Israel disputes that, but faces
increasing criticism over the policy from allies, especially after Netanyahu's
announcement in the past three weeks of plans to build 6,000 new settler homes
in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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