Apr 9, 2017

“Jason Greenblatt surprised us at the Arab League summit meetings in Amman,” a senior PLO official told Al-Monitor this week.

According to the official, Greenblatt, who is President Donald Trump’s representative for international negotiations, expressed in his meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas and in other meetings at the March 30 summit that Trump is committed to reaching a deal on Israeli-Palestinian peace, and that the time has come to make such a deal. Still, the Palestinian leadership remains skeptical about the outcome of these efforts, mainly due to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s annexationist positions. Greenblatt argued that if a balanced initiative is presented at the opening of negotiations within a regional framework, Netanyahu might be convinced. The official said the envoy explained that in such a setup, Netanyahu would have a parliamentary majority, thus it could push such an initiative forward.

Indeed, Greenblatt met in recent weeks with both leaders of the Zionist Camp — Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni. In these meetings, he laid out Trump’s view on the possible dealmaking, but doesn’t this sound like deja vu? The notion of dealmaking was present also last year, when former Secretary of State John Kerry coordinated a similar regional opening of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a two-state solution with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and King Abdullah II of Jordan. At the end, Netanyahu opted for peace with HaBayit HaYehudi leader Naftali Bennett and Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman instead.

The PLO official told Al-Monitor that Greenblatt explicitly spoke about the possibility of a two-state solution. What encouraged the Palestinians most was the time element that was emphasized by the envoy when he told his interlocutors that Trump believes the time is ripe for a “dealmaking” process.

Apart from meeting Abbas, Greenblatt met in Amman with Abdullah, his foreign minister and the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates — a crash course in inter-Arab diplomacy. Apparently, the US envoy was so inspired by these meetings that on his way back to Washington he stopped in Tel Aviv to receive a blessing from Rabbi Gershon Edelstein of Ponevezh for his important task.