U.S. President Donald Trump’s Israel-Palestinian peace plan will call for an independent Palestinian state with eastern Jerusalem as its capital, the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported on Wednesday.
A French diplomat told the Arabic-language daily that the Trump administration is expected to reveal its peace plan at an upcoming international conference in Cairo.
The report says that under Trump’s peace plan, the United States will recognize an independent Palestinian state with eastern Jerusalem as its capital on condition that the disputed old city, home to sites holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is administered by an international custodian.
Under the plan, the future Palestinian state will reportedly have limited sovereignty and demilitarized security forces. Israel will not withdraw to the 1967 lines and will retain sovereignty over the larger settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley. The settlements near the large blocs will be absorbed into them, while isolated settlements will be dismantled.
A senior official in Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s office told Israel Hayom that “at the moment, there is an ongoing disconnect with the administration. Trump and his men know what they must do. The issue of Jerusalem’s status comes first.”
Commenting on the report, Mort Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, which has largely been supportive of Trump’s policies towards Israel, said that “if the reported provisions of the plan are true, the Trump Administration’s ‘deal of the century’ would be the ‘disaster of the century.’ ”
