Expectations have been set low for meetings between US presidents and Palestinian leaders for many years now, but never as low as the hopes for Donald Trump’s first meeting with Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday, Middle East observers argue.



The Palestinian president will arrive at the White House facing a crisis of legitimacy among Palestinians, and new challenges to his leadership. He will meet the most vociferously pro-Israeli president in recent decades who has surrounded himself with Middle East advisers – foremost his son-in-law, Jared Kushner – with deep links to the Israeli settler movement.

Trump has claimed Kushner will be able to “broker a Middle East peace deal” where a succession of American statesmen have failed. But Dennis Ross, a US negotiator on the Middle East in three previous US administrations said there has seldom if ever been less hope of a grand bargain.

“There is no big deal – whether you call it the ultimate deal or the big deal,” Ross, now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I have been working on this issue for 30 years and I can safely say we are at a low ebb between Israelis and Palestinians, not in terms of violence … but a low ebb in terms of complete disbelief on both sides.”

“The combination of the psychological gaps, the practical gaps on the issues and the political gaps make it impossible to go from where we are to producing the ultimate deal,” Ross said.

Hamas supporter holds a defaced poster of President Abbas during a protest in southern Gaza. Photograph: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

Abbas arrives in Washington enfeebled by low and dwindling popularity at home – he has not faced election since 2005 – and the absence of Palestinian Authority control over Gaza. He is likely to point to a statement by Hamas on Monday accepting the 1967 ceasefire lines as defining a Palestinian state and therefore tacitly accepting Israel’s existence, as a consequence of his pressure on Hamas rule in Gaza. He has cut salary and electricity bill payments to the enclave. But the Hamas concession has come at a time when a two-state solution to the conflict looks more remote than ever.

“Abbas comes in a weak position because of Palestinian disunity, which he has done nothing to address,” said Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University. “The bankruptcy of these two leaderships, Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, is really quite stunning. Neither has a strategy.”

Abbas is also under pressure from within his own Fatah movement, from Marwan Barghouti, serving a 40-year sentence in an Israeli jail for directing lethal attacks on Israelis during the second intifada, is seen on the West Bank as as much a challenge to Abbas’s authority as to the Israeli government.

“The real question now is whether there is going to be any form of elections,” said Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian Authority, now at the Institute for Middle East Understanding in Ramallah. “For Mahmoud Abbas, the big issue is that he has to now demonstrate legitimacy … He has had three terms after only being elected for one … He has always said legitimacy isn’t just through the ballot box – which I don’t agree with – but you can also show you are a leader by showing that you are doing things and having different programmes and having the world recognise you as being a legitimate leader.”

In those terms, Palestinian observers said the invitation to the White House has come as a relief to the Abbas camp, which had been fearful that he would be ignored completely by the Trump administration, further undermining his standing at home.

The Israeli settlement of Ramot in an area of the occupied West Bank. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Khalidi argued that a meeting with Trump would do little to bolster Abbas’s standing among Palestinians. However, it could still turn into a political liability for the Palestinian leader, if he fails to fend off radically pro-Israeli moves, such as moving the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, strongly advocated by David Friedman, the newly confirmed US ambassador to Israel and Trump’s former bankruptcy lawyer. It is a proposal that the White House said on Monday was still “under discussion”.

“The immediate aim at this point is not to suffer decisive blows,” said Daniel Levy, the head of the US Middle East project. “At a minimum they need an American administration operating on that premise, not giving carte blanche for expansion of settlements, not taking all of Jerusalem.”

More recently, Levy said, the Palestinian leadership has been “a little more hopeful that this administration will play by the playbook”. But that playbook has produced no progress for over two decades, while Israeli settlements on the West Bank have continued to expand.

“When it comes to Trump, Abbas is not going to walk away with anything from this meeting,” Buttu said. “Trump has made it clear that he is not going to follow the negotiations process that has been followed for nearly 25 years. At the same time he has made it clear through his appointment of David Friedman … that he supports the continued settlement expansion and supports a very rightwing, very extreme version of Israel.”