JERUSALEM — President Joe Biden will travel to the West Bank on Friday to meet with Palestinian leaders frustrated over a number of Trump-era policies that remain in place, amid low expectations any significant progress would be made towards peace with Israel.
Biden planned to meet with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and announce a number of new initiatives around improving health care, expanding 4G digital access in Gaza and the West Bank by the end of 2023 along with other measures aimed at spurring economic growth, assisting Palestinian refugees, and reducing food insecurity, the White House said.
While Biden has improved relations between the U.S. and Palestinian leaders compared with where they stood under his predecessor, his administration has been slow to reverse several measures put in place by former President Donald Trump that Palestinians say go directly to their goal of an independent state.
The U.S. embassy to Israel remains in Jerusalem, where Trump relocated it from Tel Aviv, the U.S. consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem and offices for Palestinians in Washington remain closed, and Israeli settlements on the West Bank that Trump did not criticize have continued to grow.
Administration officials indicated there wouldn’t be any change to those policies during this visit. Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. would like to reopen the consulate, and that discussions with the Israelis and Palestinians around the move were ongoing.
“In terms of the actual tangibles in their hands, they’re going to likely be left with some statements, a visit, and a handshake,” said Shira Efron, director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, of the Palestinians.
Biden was to arrive in the West Bank after two days of meetings in Israel where he reaffirmed his support for a two-state solution, but said he didn’t see it as something that would be achieved in the “near term.”
“Israel must remain an independent, democratic, Jewish state, the ultimate guarantee and guarantor of security of the Jewish people not only in Israel but the entire world,” Biden said Thursday. “I believe that to my core, and the best way to achieve that remains a two-state solution for two people, both of whom have deep and ancient roots in this land, living side-by-side in peace and security.”
A senior administration official said that while the White House would like to make more progress towards reaching a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, they are being “very realistic about it” and trying to avoid a top down approach.
Biden administration officials have sought to emphasize the progress they have made in improving U.S.-Palestinian relations by restoring funding to the Palestinians that was cut off by Trump, and re-engaging in talks with Palestinian leaders after the Trump administration broke off nearly all communications.
“Given what the situation was when we walked into office — there was really no connection whatsoever, no discussions with the Palestinians, funding had been entirely severed, there was really no prospect of any political discussions of any kind,” said the official. “So we have worked to reestablish a lot of those connections.”
Shortly before Biden’s visit, Israel’s caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid spoke with Abbas by phone, the first publicly acknowledged contact between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in five years, and Israel announced it would be adding 1,500 work permits for Palestinian workers and legalizing the status of 5,500 undocumented Palestinians and others in the occupied West Bank.
Biden began his Friday schedule with a visit to a hospital in East Jerusalem, an area that has been contested by the Israelis and Palestinians, where he will announce a proposed $100 million funding package to the East Jerusalem Hospital Network, which provides specialized care to Palestinian patients. The funding is contingent on congressional approval, the White House said.
The hospital stop has been a source of tension among some Israelis who view the visit by an American president without any Israeli officials accompanying him as adding to Palestinian claims over that section of the city, which Palestinians hope will one day be the capital of an independent Palestinian state. Several Republican members of Congress have urged Biden not to make the visit for that reason.
Following the hospital stop, Biden will travel to the West Bank to meet with Abbas in Bethlehem, where he will also visit the Church of the Nativity before flying from Tel Aviv to Saudi Arabia — the first time a president has flown directly from Israel to Saudi Arabia, White House officials said.
Biden administration officials say they have intentionally taken a more hands off approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than the prior administration. On the eve of Trump’s inauguration, he declared that his son-in-law Jared Kushner would make peace in the Middle East. Kushner eventually unveiled a Middle East peace plan that came about with no involvement from the Palestinians and was never acted upon.
“We have not come in with a top-down plan. But we have always said if parties are ready to talk, which we think they should, we will be there right beside them, and we look forward to that day, and I think that’ll be part of the conversation that the president has tomorrow in Bethlehem,” the administration official said.
But Biden has embraced one key move by the Trump administration: the Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. Biden is looking to replicate the model between Israel and other Arab countries, a goal that is expected to be a central theme of his visit to Saudi Arabia.
Another point of tension during visit will also be the death of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, for which human rights and journalist advocacy groups have pushed for Biden to hold Israel accountable. The U.S. concluded earlier this month that Abu Akleh was most likely killed by gunfire from Israeli military positions, but U.S. investigators have said they couldn’t reach a definitive conclusion about the origins of the bullet that killed her, the State Department said.
Investigations by the United Nations and independent Western media organizations found that Israeli fire led to her death.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Abu Akleh’s family ahead of the trip and invited them to Washington for further discussions.
“This just tragic, horrific incident is something that was on all of our minds,” the official said. “We’ve put up publicly what we believe to have happened and we’ve called on the Israelis to conclude their report and release it publicly as soon as possible.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
