President Donald Trump vowed on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) to do “whatever is necessary” to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians as he hosted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House.
However, he offered no clues to of how could revive long-stalled negotiations.
In their first face-to-face meeting, Trump pressed Abbas and other Palestinian leaders to “speak in a unified voice against incitement ” to violence against Israelis, but stopped short of explicitly recommitting his administration to a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict, a long-standing foundation of US policy.
Despite what many experts see as a long-shot bid, Trump told Abbas: “I will do whatever is necessary. I would love to be a mediator or an arbitrator or a facilitator, and we will get this done.”
Read the full article by Jeff Mason and Matt Spetalnick at The Australian Financial Review.