U.S. President Donald Trump plans to introduce his Middle East peace plan, dubbed the "deal of the century," during the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York next month, the Palestinian daily Al-Quds reported Monday.
The 73rd General Assembly session will be held from Sept. 18 to Oct. 5 and will feature speeches from prominent world leaders, including Trump, who is set to address the assembly on Sept. 25.
The United States has, in the past, warned that if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas remains adamant in his refusal to engage the U.S. as a mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Washington will introduce its regional peace plan regardless of his reservations.
Abbas has been shunning the U.S.'s peace efforts since Trump's Dec. 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the subsequent move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and has accused the Trump administration of being "grossly biased" in Israel's favor.
According to the report, U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who have been working on the plan since early 2017, seek to introduce it under the "most optimal conditions" and the General Assembly is seen that the best venue to do so.
Last week, the four envoys released a joint statement on Twitter acknowledging that "no one will be fully pleased" with the much-anticipated Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
"No one will be fully pleased with our proposal, but that's the way it must be if real peace is to be achieved. Peace can only succeed if it is based on realities," the statement said.
Al-Quds quoted an unnamed American official as saying that Trump has been keeping the details of the plan close to the vest as he prefers to outline it in full at the world leaders' meeting.
The source said Trump believed that if his plan for Middle East peace were to fail, no other U.S. plan would be able to resolve the decadeslong regional conflict.
The official stressed that it would be up to the Israelis and Palestinians to accept or reject the plan.
