After holding two meetings with U.S. envoys over the weekend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that the American officials had expressed "absolute support for Israel's policies and our actions to ensure the security of the citizens of Israel near the Gaza border."
Amid violent clashes in weekly Palestinian demonstrations along the Israel-Gaza border, in which more than 100 Palestinians have been killed since the protests began in late March, U.S. President Donald Trump's senior Middle East envoys – senior adviser Jared Kushner and special emissary Jason Greenblatt – met with Netanyahu on Friday and again on Saturday to discuss Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects, after holding separate talks with Arab leaders, the White House said.
Washington has said it has a peace plan in the works that could be released soon.
Netanyahu briefed his cabinet on his meetings on Sunday, saying "we discussed the diplomatic process, the regional issues and we focused in particular on the situation in Gaza."
"We discussed how to solve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza without boosting Hamas. These things are clear to all sides: first we focus on how to maintain security, then on preventing a wider conflagration, if that's even possible," Netanyahu said.
On Friday, the White House issued a statement after Kushner and Greenblatt met with Netanyahu and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, saying the foursome "discussed the means by which the humanitarian situation in Gaza can be alleviated while maintaining Israel's security. They further discussed the continued commitment of the Trump administration and Israel to advance peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians."
The statement gave no additional details.
Kushner has been leading efforts to broker a peace deal between the two sides. U.S. officials have said the long-awaited peace plan is near completion and should be released this summer following several postponements. Kushner and Greenblatt's trip to Jerusalem followed a regional tour that included Jordan, Egypt and Qatar. They also held talks in Saudi Arabia, which does not recognize Israel but shares its enmity toward Iran.
The Prime Minister's Office put out a similar summary after the hours-long meeting that referred to prospective Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking more generally as "the diplomatic process." According to the PMO statement, Netanyahu "expressed his gratitude for President Trump's support for Israel."
Israeli officials have said they want any new negotiations to include broad engagement with Arab powers.
The U.S. envoys did not have any meetings scheduled with the Palestinians, who suspended ties with Trump in December over his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The Palestinians envision parts of Jerusalem as the capital of their own future state.
Palestinians under pressure
Meanwhile, senior Palestinian Authority officials criticized Kushner and Greenblatt's shuttle diplomacy in the region.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas' spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said that "the circumvention on the part of the American envoys and their disregarding of the Palestinian leadership will lead to a dead end."
"The path to peace only runs through the Palestinian leadership," he added, "which has the support of Arab countries who have made this clear to the American envoys."
Senior PA official Saeb Erekat said, "There is a clear attempt here by the American administration to undermine the stability of the Palestinian leadership and Abbas. Kushner and Greenblatt heard unified messages, whereby the Arabs support the Palestinian position that the solution to the conflict is the creation of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as the capital. Neither the Palestinians nor the Arab countries will support any plan that doesn't include the two-state solution."
Another senior official in the PA told Israel Hayom that "Abbas is under tremendous pressure to meet with Trump's envoys and review the main points of the plan taking shape in Washington, but Abbas has stressed that he doesn't view the Americans as an impartial mediator and isn't interested in meeting with them."
Israel Hayom revealed last week that Abbas has been under considerable pressure from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to withdraw his boycott of the Trump administration and end his statements accusing the Americans of bias in Israel's favor.
One Palestinian source told Israel Hayom that senior Saudi and UAE officials had made it clear to Abbas that they support the American peace plan and are willing to offer the Palestinians diplomatic and financial guarantees to ensure they return to the negotiating table.
