Trump Sells Progress as the New Palestinian Dream
Trump’s Bahrain conference in June has been dismissed by Palestinian leaders, but it’s not aimed at winning their approval.
Dream-maker.
Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/BloombergOn June 25th, the United States will convene an economic conference in Bahrain whose ostensible purpose is to raise a large sum of money to help the Palestinian economy. To shore up support for the effort, Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and Mideast envoy, is leading a delegation to the region this week.
The Palestinian Authority has announced that it will not accept any of the money raised. It is planning to boycott the summit and calls on friendly Arab countries to do the same. In a recent article in Haaretz, Nabil Shaath, senior adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, denounced the conference as an American attempt to bribe the Palestinians into relinquishing their “inalienable rights” to statehood. On Monday, Abbas himself put it more colorfully, saying the plan would “go to hell”; a diplomatic solution, he insisted, must come first.