Trump invites Abbas to White House to discuss peace process
President Donald Trump invited Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to visit the White House following their first phone conversation since Trump took office in late January.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Credit: Kremlin.ru via Wikimedia Commons.
“President Trump has extended an official invitation to President Abbas to visit the White House soon to discuss ways to resume the political process, stressing his commitment to a peace process that will lead to a real peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” said Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah, the official PA news agency WAFA reported.
The report was later confirmed by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who said that Trump had invited Abbas to a meeting at the White House “soon.”
Abu Rdainah said that in his phone conversation with Trump, Abbas “stressed the commitment to peace as a strategic choice to establish a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel.” The PA spokesman said that Trump stressed his “commitment to a peace process that would lead to real peace between Palestinians and Israelis.”
During his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in February, Trump broke with long-held U.S. policy by saying that he was open to alternative resolutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rather than exclusively a two-state solution.
“I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like…I can live with either one,” Trump said at the time.
(JNS.org)
