Middle East
While Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will also attend the summit, the Palestinian Authority, Russia and China plan to boycott it.
Worldwide protests are set to coincide with the U.S.-sponsored “Peace to Prosperity” conference in Bahrain.
“I hesitate to say that deterrence has been established,” said Gen. Frank McKenzie. “We continue to see possible imminent threats.”
Business allies include Tom Barrack, CEO of real estate investment firm Colony Capital; Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Dina Powell of Goldman Sachs.
The general feeling in the United States and Israel at this point is that this plan is “dead on arrival,” especially since the Palestinian leadership has already rejected it out of hand and refused to attend the summit in Bahrain. Nevertheless, “Phase 1” is in motion.
“We are not rejectionist,” said Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh of the upcoming U.S. Mideast peace plan. “Our problem is that we know. There are so many people who are blind, but we know—we know where they are taking us.”
Ari Fleischer, who served as White House press secretary under U.S. President George W. Bush, tweeted: “The fact that a guest at this meeting took an audio and provided it to the media is disgusting. The guests were fortunate to be invited to a meeting like this. To record it and release it is a betrayal of trust.”
“It may be rejected. Could be in the end, folks will say, ‘It’s not particularly original; it doesn’t particularly work for me.’ That is, ‘It’s got two good things and nine bad things; I’m out,’ ” said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a private meeting with Jewish leaders.
White House senior adviser Jared Kushner said “there’s a difference between the technocrats and ... the people,” adding that “when I speak to Palestinian people, what they want is they want the opportunity to live a better life. They want the opportunity to pay their mortgage.”
In a closed-door meeting in New York, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledges that “this has taken us longer to roll out our plan than I had originally thought it might—to put it lightly.”
Nevertheless, U.S. President Donald Trump says “I think we have a good chance” to move forward with the Mideast peace plan.
“The Bahrain workshop will go on as scheduled, June 25-26,” said a White House official in an email, despite the fact that the Israeli government is in turmoil.
