FOREIGN POLICY/ISRAEL/PALESTINE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump traveled to Bethlehem on Tuesday [5-23-17], meeting with the Palestinian leader and vowing again to ‘do everything I can’ to break through decades of resistance to reach a peace deal but reporting no concrete progress.
A day after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Trump visited the occupied West Bank and sat down with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Trump and Mr. Abbas emerged from the meeting with hopeful but vague words, and no details of what might come next.
‘I am truly hopeful that America can help Israel and the Palestinians forge peace and bring new hope to the region and its people,’ Mr. Trump said as Mr. Abbas stood next to him. ‘I also firmly believe that if Israel and the Palestinians can make peace, it will begin a process of peace all throughout the Middle East, and that would be an amazing accomplishment.’
Mr. Trump offered no vision of what such a deal might look like or the process he intended to take to reach one. At one point, there was talk of trying to bring Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas together during this visit. But Mr. Trump will leave the region later on Tuesday without such a meeting, without any public concessions or movement by either side, nor even a road map for how negotiations might proceed.”
-Ian Fisher and Peter Baker, “Trump Meets With Abbas, but Progress on Peace Remains Elusive,” The New York Times online, May 23, 2017