US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan efforts will begin “immediately” following the Israeli elections this April.
Speaking in a video-conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Pompeo said Israel and the Palestinian Arabs will “ultimately” have to come to an agreement, reported i24news.
“We’ve been working on this for a long time. Mr. (Jared) Kushner has been in the lead along with Jason Greenblatt in developing our program. We’ve begun to share elements of this across the region. It won’t be a US-driven process,” the Secretary of State said.
“Ultimately, the Israelis and the Palestinians will have to come to an agreement. But we think that the foundations that we have laid and the work that we’ll do immediately following the Israeli elections will set conditions where we can have a constructive conversation,” Pompeo continued.
Details on the administration’s peace plan, which has been dubbed the “Deal of the Century” are not yet known. Last week, Channel 13 News, quoting an unnamed source, reported that the peace plan formulated by the White House includes the establishment of a Palestinian state in about 90 percent of Judea and Samaria, with at least part of eastern Jerusalem as its capital.
Under the plan, the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and the Mount of Olives would reportedly remain under Israeli sovereignty, but with full administrative partnership with the Palestinians.
Greenblatt later said the report was inaccurate and added, “Speculation about the content of the plan is not helpful. Very few people on the planet know what is in it… for now....”
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman recently indicated that the US will not be releasing its Middle East peace plan in the immediate future.
Friedman explained that the release of the plan would be postponed by "several months" amid Israeli elections and the ongoing refusal by the Palestinian Authority to accept the plan.
Regardless of what the plan says, Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas has rejected the US peace plan before it has even been unveiled.
Abbas has been boycotting the US ever since Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December of 2017.