The Trump administration is nearly finished drafting its Mideast peace proposal and will release it soon, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Thursday.
.. Haley added that U.S. negotiators Jared Kushner and Jason D. Greenblatt are “still going back and forth,”
.. Haley added that U.S. negotiators Jared Kushner and Jason D. Greenblatt are “still going back and forth,”
.. Palestinian leaders have said the Jerusalem decision means the United States can no longer be an honest broker.
.. David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, pressed Haley on whether the United States would propose an independent Palestinian stat
.. “It’s for them to decide,” Haley said
.. Axelrod asked Haley about proposals to cut legal migration “by 40 percent,”
.. She advises Trump directly and is among the most hawkish voices on issues including Iran and Israel, sometimes putting her at odds with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
.. Kissinger, she said, had advised her that negotiations go better when one tries to understand an adversary’s goals and motives. That applies in international affairs and in politics, she told the students.
“You don’t have to agree with them – most times you won’t. But you have to understand where they’re coming from,” Haley said.
“This is a skill that I am afraid is being lost in America today,” along with perspective on political differences, she said.
Mike Pence’s Self-Serving Trip to the Holy Land
When Mr. Pence announced his first trip to the Middle East, he initially hoped to draw attention to the persecution of Christians in the region, as well as nudge Israelis and Palestinians toward peace.
.. Mr. Pence wrapped up the trip to Israel, Egypt and Jordan on Tuesday, having been rebuffed by top Christian leaders in those countries in protest over Mr. Trump’s decision last month to break with decades of American policy — and recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
.. It’s still mysterious just how Mr. Trump believes he has advanced the cause of peace, or fortified America’s standing in the world, with that decision. Its costs in terms of American isolation, on the other hand, were evident throughout the trip. Mr. Pence also didn’t meet with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who flew instead to Brussels to ask European leaders for protection from Mr. Trump’s bad decisions. Neither did Mr. Pence sit down with other Palestinian leaders, any Israeli-Arab citizens, or Israeli opposition members.
.. One place Mr. Pence did strike an enthusiastic chord was in Parliament in Israel, where a hard-line government is largely hostile to a two-state solution. Members interrupted him with standing ovations. His address was replete with biblical references to Jewish ties to the Holy Land. He referred to God’s promise to the Jews that “he would gather and bring you back to the land which your fathers possessed” and to “the Jewish people’s unbreakable bond to” Jerusalem.
.. He has weakened the Palestinians by cutting millions of dollars in aid for health and education projects for Palestinian refugees and then fanned new tensions with his one-sided decision on Jerusalem. At the same time, the gulf between the United States and Europe, once close partners in the peace process, is growing. Such divisions only serve to make good outcomes harder to achieve.
Foreign Officials Say Trump’s Plan for Jerusalem Is at Odds with Peace Efforts
Mr. Macron said the question of Jerusalem “should be resolved in the framework of peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” his office said.
.. Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview with Politico published Monday that declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel would “lay a cornerstone for peace because what it says is that under any peace agreement in the future, Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel.”
.. Jerusalem was divided in 1948 when Israel was founded, with Israel controlling the western parts of the city and Jordan controlling the eastern parts, including the Old City and its sacred sites for Muslims, Jews and Christians. Israel seized control of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and eventually annexed the occupied parts of the city—something most of the international community refuses to recognize.
.. Mr. Trump got unusually involved in a National Security Council meeting last week about Jerusalem, where U.S. officials said he was frustrated and urged aides to find a way to make good on his campaign promise to move the embassy.
.. By making an announcement about Jerusalem without moving the U.S. Embassy right away, the Trump administration may be looking for a way for the president to demonstrate his commitment without sabotaging peace talks.
.. The administration also could be gambling that any protests will be short-lived and that the Palestinians would find they have no choice but to eventually return to negotiations.
.. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a global group currently led by Saudi Arabia, warned that the U.S. would “lose the legal and moral high ground and its mediating role” if it made the expected announcement about Jerusalem.
Jared Kushner’s Vast Duties, and Visibility in White House, Shrink
At a senior staff meeting early in President Trump’s tenure, Reince Priebus, then the White House chief of staff, posed a simple question to Jared Kushner: What would his newly created Office of American Innovation do?
Mr. Kushner brushed him off, according to people privy to the exchange. Given that he and his top lieutenants were paid little or nothing, Mr. Kushner asked, “What do you care?” He emphasized his point with an expletive.
“O.K.,” Mr. Priebus replied. “You do whatever you want.”
.. the do-whatever-you-want stage of Mr. Kushner’s tenure is over.
.. Mr. Kelly has made clear that Mr. Kushner must fit within a chain of command. “Jared works for me,” he has told associates.
.. Mr. Kelly has even discussed the possibility of Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, departing the West Wing by the end of the year.
.. The president’s affections are fickle, and he tends to keep relationships open even if they are strained.
.. that reflected his success, not failure. By helping to push out Mr. Priebus and Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist and acerbic nationalist infighter, they said, Mr. Kushner helped stabilize the White House, allowing him to focus on his own projects rather than feeling compelled to weigh in on so many different issues.
.. In the first months of the administration, Mr. Kushner typically would spend five or six hours a day with the president in what his advocates described as playing defense, making sure others were not gaming the system by persuading Mr. Trump to make decisions without consulting others who had interest in the issues. Now under a less freewheeling system, Mr. Kushner and other aides are expected to stay in their own lanes.
.. “But now he is no longer seen, and we are only left to wonder about the boy whose father-in-law placed the hope of unraveling the world’s most intractable public policy puzzles from peace in the Middle East to reinventing government” in him.
.. Worried that his conversations might have been picked up on a government-authorized wiretap or perhaps by Russia or China, Mr. Kushner has become increasingly cautious about how he communicates, even with friends.
.. Mr. Kushner expressed relief over Mr. Mueller’s appointment in May, assuming that the prosecutor’s inquiry would effectively freeze congressional investigations and therefore free up the White House to pursue its legislative agenda.
.. At one point this fall, a scenario circulated in which Ms. Trump could replace Nikki R. Haley as ambassador to the United Nations if Ms. Haley replaced Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson.
.. they have found more satisfaction in recent months now that Mr. Bannon is no longer inside the West Wing fighting them
.. The building at 666 Fifth Avenue is awash in $1.2 billion in debt, and a key business partner recently declared that a redevelopment plan created by Mr. Kushner before he joined the government is unfeasible.
.. Congress appears to be on the verge of creating a $500 million fund to help agencies modernize outdated information technology systems, some of which are at least 40 years old... Mr. Kushner’s push for technological advances is hobbled by a lack of permanent officials to carry out policy changes at the agency level. The White House has failed to name chief information officers for nine major agencies, including Defense, Treasury and Homeland Security. Even the federal chief information officer is only an acting official, and the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy is largely a ghost town.