Israeli minister expresses concern about $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia
JERUSALEM -- An Israeli Cabinet minister has expressed concern about a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia that President Trump signed Saturday in Riyadh.
Yuval Steinitz, a senior Cabinet minister and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confidant, called Saudi Arabia "a hostile country" and said the deal was "definitely something that should trouble us."
He made the remark as Mr. Trump prepares to head to Israel, on the second leg of his first overseas as president.
The trip comes as the dynamics between the United States and the region's players are moving in unexpected directions.
"That was a tremendous day," Mr. Trump told reporters on Saturday while in Saudi Arabia. "Tremendous investments in the United States."
The agreement he signed -- which signals a strengthening relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia -- will provide fighter jets, tanks, combat ships and anti-missile defense systems, and create defense-sector jobs in the U.S., according to the White House. The deal includes additional private-sector agreements and a joint vision statement with Saudi Arabia, one of the world's largest oil producers.
Mr. Trump's trip to Israel set to begin Monday, and include separate meetings with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Trump also planned to visit the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem and the Western Wall, an important key Jewish holy site.
Mr. Trump has cast the elusive pursuit of peace between Israelis and Palestinians as the "ultimate deal." But he will step foot in Israel having offered few indications of how he plans to achieve what so many of his predecessors could not.
Mr. Trump has handed son-in-law Jared Kushner and longtime business lawyer Jason Greenblatt the assignment of charting the course toward a peace process. The White House-driven effort is a sharp shift from the practice of U.S. previous administrations that typically gave secretaries of state those reins. Kushner and Greenblatt were to accompany Mr. Trump on his two-day visit.
White House aides have played expectations for significant progress on the peace process during Mr. Trump's stop, casting it as more symbolic than substantive. Yet Mr. Trump may still need to engage in some delicate diplomacy following revelations that he disclosed highly classified intelligence Israel obtained about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) with top Russian officials, without Israel's permission.
While Israeli officials cheered Mr. Trump's election, some are now wary of the tougher line he has taken on settlements: urging restraint but not calling for a full halt to construction. Trump has retreated from a campaign pledge to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, bending to the same diplomatic and security concerns as other presidents who have made similar promises.
Palestinians, who viewed Mr. Trump's victory with some trepidation, are said to have been pleasantly surprised by his openness during a recent meeting with Abbas in Washington. A senior official who was part of the Palestinian delegation said Mr. Trump is planning to try to relaunch peace talks, with a goal of reaching an agreement within a year. The Trump administration rejected a request from the Palestinians to push for an Israeli settlement freeze, but promised to sort out the issue during peace negotiations, according to the official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Jibril Rajoub, a senior Palestinian official close to Abbas, said Mr. Trump was a "serious president" who "seeks to have a real deal, not just managing the conflict."
David Friedman, the new U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the newspaper Israel Hayom that Trump's goal at the start is simply "for the parties to meet with each other without preconditions and to begin a discussion that would hopefully lead to peace."
The last round of peace talks, led by then-President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry, fell apart in 2014.
Greenblatt has quietly done much of the heavy work for the U.S. thus far. The low-profile Greenblatt, who spent about two decades as a lawyer at the Trump Organization before joining the White House, has traveled to the region twice since the inauguration and is in weekly contact with pivotal players from both sides.
Palestinian officials were struck by the fact that Greenblatt, an Orthodox Jew, took off his skullcap for their meetings. He also visited the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah, home to Abbas' West Bank headquarters, and a school at the camp, which sits opposite to the Israeli settlement of Beit El. Senior White House officials, including Friedman, have close ties with Beit El.
"That was good gesture by him," said Mahmoud Mubarak, head of the local council in Jalazoun.
Aaron David Miller, a Middle East peace adviser to Democratic and Republican secretaries of state, said that despite Greenblatt's positive reviews in the region, there are limits over how much influence he, or any American officials, can have over the process.
"The issue over many years has not been the mediator in the middle -- it's the guys sitting on the other sides of the mediators," said Miller, now a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Israeli officials say they are largely in the dark about what ideas Mr. Trump might present for peace or what concessions he may demand. Hard-liners who dominate Netanyahu's government grew particularly concerned when White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster voiced support last week for Palestinian "self-determination."
Naftali Bennett, leader of the nationalist Jewish Home Party, lamented "a kind of change in the spirit" of Trump's positions since he was elected in November. He urged Netanyahu to reject Palestinian statehood and insist that Jerusalem remain under Israeli sovereignty forever.
While Netanyahu in the past has expressed support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, he has been vague about this goal since Mr. Trump gained power.
Mr. Trump's trip began in Saudi Arabia over the weekend, and after Israel, it takes him to the Vatican for an audience with Pope Francis, to Brussels for a NATO summit and to Sicily for a meeting of leaders of the Group of Seven major industrial nations.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump gave a speech in Riyadh. He focused on unifying Muslim nations in the fight against terrorism.
Mr. Trump emphasized that the fight isn't a battle between different faiths, but "battle between good and evil" -- and a battle that other Muslim nations must lead. Mr. Trump called on Muslim nations to "drive them (terrorists) out of your Holy Land, and drive the out of this earth."
"Muslim nations must be willing to take on terrorism and send its wicked ideology into oblivion," Mr. Trump said.