Trump offers Abbas help with peace --- but with asterisks

WASHINGTON - President Trump expressed optimism Wednesday that he can succeed where past American presidents have failed and secure a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, but he made no promises that peace would mean an independent Palestinian state.

With Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas by his side, Trump confidently said that if the two parties are willing, he wants to help.

"I'm committed to working with Israel and the Palestinians to reach an agreement. But any agreement cannot be imposed by the United States or by any other nation," Trump said. "The Palestinians and Israelis must work together to reach an agreement that allows both peoples to live, worship, and thrive and prosper in peace."

Absent was any mention of a sovereign Palestine, long a bedrock of American and international peacemaking efforts, or how he would address other festering issues that have sundered past efforts at negotiations such as the fate of Jerusalem.

Abbas ticked through the usual list of Palestinian demands for peace, including a sovereign state based on the borders as they existed in 1967.

Peace based on a "two-state solution" would allow wider Arab diplomatic recognition of Israel and aid in the fight against extremist movements such as the Islamic State, Abbas asserted.

"Our strategic option, our strategic choice, is to bring about peace based on the vision of the two states, a Palestinian state, with its capital of east Jerusalem that lives in peace and stability with the state of Israel," Abbas said through an interpreter.

In his brief public remarks with Abbas, Trump did not mention Jewish homebuilding in the West Bank, something past presidents have made sure to reference, if only obliquely, as an impediment to peace. And he said nothing about his pledge to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a symbolic shift that Arab leaders including Jordanian King Abdullah II have warned Trump could wreck a chance for peace.

Trump must notify Congress by June 1 if he, like past U.S. presidents, intends to seek a deferral of a U.S. law mandating the embassy move. Former U.S. officials and analysts in the United States and Israel said Trump is nearly certain to seek the delay.

For Abbas, a White House invitation so early in the administration is seen as a coup and a sign that Trump is serious about negotiations that help give the veteran Palestinian leader credibility at home and a mandate abroad.

"This is a lifesaver," said Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian peace negotiator who is now a scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"Since the collapse of the last talks, Abbas has been marginalized and the Palestinian issue is seen as not relevant," as other conflicts and crises took precedence, al-Omari said. "He needs this for his own centrality."

"We believe that we are capable and able to bring about success to our efforts, because, Mr. President, you have the determination and you have the desire," Abbas said.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer later said Trump had raised the issue of Palestinian payments to the families of suicide bombers and prisoners who harm Israeli civilians. Israel has recently highlighted the issue as an obstacle to talks and a group of Republican senators has introduced legislation to cut off American aid.

The Trump administration has yet to articulate a clear strategy for engaging in any negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, leaving vague whether the goal of peace might be defined as a version of the de facto Israeli control that now exists.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was among the first foreign leaders to visit Trump this spring, and the new U.S. administration has repeatedly underscored its close bond with the Israeli leader. Trump may visit Israel later this month, Israeli and former U.S. officials said.

The administration has also signaled that it will not denounce Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank, although Trump told Netanyahu publicly that he would prefer a hiatus as a way to foster peace talks.

But the biggest sign of change in the Trump approach to Israel and potential peace is the omission of formerly rote language promising Palestinian sovereignty as the goal of negotiations.

When Netanyahu visited the White House earlier this year, Trump mused about either a one- or two-state outcome, saying that he "could live with" either.

On Wednesday, Trump cast the United States in a more intermediary role.

"I will do whatever is necessary to facilitate the agreement, to mediate, to arbitrate anything they'd like to do, but I would be a mediator or an arbitrator or a facilitator," Trump said.

"Over the course of my lifetime, I've always heard that perhaps the toughest deal to make is the deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Let's see if we can prove them wrong, okay?" he said.