Impossible Middle East peace deal

Trump predicts 'good shot' at achieving 'impossible' Middle East peace deal

The president also said the U.S. was 'in the middle, trying to help' India and Pakistan as tensions rise between the two countries.

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

President Donald Trump is leaving Vietnam without a deal on North Korean denuclearization, but insisted he had some “reasonably attractive news” on other peace efforts.

At an end-of-trip press conference in Hanoi, Trump opened by touting his administration's efforts to deescalate tensions between India and Pakistan — which are currently clashing over incursions in the disputed Kashmir region — and later said he’s confident his administration can broker a Middle East peace deal.

“It is interesting, all my life I've heard that the toughest of all deals — when they talk about tough deals — we all like deals, but the toughest of all deals would be peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” he told an Israeli reporter on Thursday.

The president’s optimism comes as Jared Kushner, his senior adviser and son-in-law who has taken the reigns of negotiating a long-evaded peace plan, makes a seven day swing through the Middle East to discuss the proposal, making visits to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Trump has, in the past, referred to such an agreement as the “deal of the century.”

“They say it’s like the impossible deal," he said Thursday. "I would love to be able to produce it. We will see what happens." He added that the Palestinians have been “much better” about willing to engage in peace talks, predicting that "we have actually a good shot at peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Kushner told Sky News Arabia this week that the U.S. peace plan blueprint “is very detailed and will focus on drawing the border and resolving the core issues” and will incorporate “practical and just solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian issue that will be relevant for 2019.”

His comments raised eyebrows in Israel, where an opponent of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s in the upcoming elections has accused Trump of conspiring with Netanyahu to keep the plan under wraps until after Israel's April election.

“It seems that everybody is in the loop, planning the Palestinian State right over our heads,” Naftali Bennett said Wednesday, according to The Jerusalem Post.

On Thursday, the president ignored the Israeli reporter’s multiple questions about whether Netanyahu had made concessions for a Middle East peace deal.

Many experts have said Kushner's plan will be dead on arrival, though. The Palestinians have refused to meet with Trump administration officials ever since the president decided to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U.S. Embassy there — changes long sought by Netanyahu.

Trump on Thursday also expressed hope that the escalating violence between India and Pakistan would come to an end.

“They've been going at it, and we've been involved in trying to have them stop, and we have some reasonably recent news, I think hopefully that is going to come to an end,” he said at the beginning of his press conference, declining to go into further specifics.

“There's a lot of dislike, unfortunately, so we've been in the middle, trying to help them both out and see if we can get some organization and some peace, and I think probably that's going to be happening,” he added.

The Kashmir region, which has been at the center of conflict between the two countries since the 1940s, has seen tensions rise over the last two weeks following a suicide car bombing that killed over 40 Indian military personnel.

The Associated Press reported that India and Pakistan exchanged gunfire into Thursday morning, following an Indian airstrike in Pakistan earlier this week, and Pakistan’s reported downing of two Indian warplanes and capture of a pilot on Wednesday.

Though Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has called for talks between the two countries, members of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party have called for more military action, the AP reported.