“The Palestinian Authority is not only condemning our peace plan, they’re taking action to subvert it,” said U.S. envoy Jason Greenblatt.
Despite repeated questions by a CNN interviewer suggesting that the U.S. administration should be more even-handed in criticizing Israel as well as the Palestinian Authority (PA), Jason Greenblatt, an envoy for President Donald Trump on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, says that he doesn’t believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone “over the line” in a way that deserves criticism.
The interview was conducted on the sidelines of this week’s Bahrain workshop, at which a U.S. plan for economic development in the region was discussed. The plan speaks of $50 billion in regional investment projects over the coming decade, more than half in the Palestinian territories in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and the rest in Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon.
Greenblatt has criticized the PA on a number of occasions. Regarding the Palestinian boycott of the Bahrain event, he told Israel’s Kan broadcaster that “the Palestinian leadership is manipulating what we’re saying.”
In the Kan interview, also conducted in Bahrain, Greenblatt ridiculed the Palestinian accusation that it was left out of the planning or from attending the economic conference.
“They decided to boycott the event before they were even invited to the event,” the Trump adviser retorted.
However, asked about Netanyahu in the CNN interview, the U.S. envoy said: “I haven’t found anything to criticize that goes over the line.”
Asked on the American news network about the Israeli prime minister’s proclamation just before the April Knesset election that he would impose Israeli law on Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, Greenblatt refrained from criticizing the prime minister, saying instead that “we are not up to things that might happen down the road. I think it’s a theoretical conversation at this point.”
The U.S. envoy says that he is more critical of the Palestinians because “the Palestinian Authority is not only condemning our peace plan, they’re taking action to subvert it, to undermine it, to prevent peace from happening.”
