White House peace plan???

'Snow job': Palestinians reject economic portion of White House peace plan

By GABBY ORR

Palestinian officials on Sunday dismissed a $50 billion economic stimulus package unveiled by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner as a “snow job,” claiming the 40-page proposal first released over the weekend was a waste of “time and taxpayers’ dollars.”

Mounir el-Jagoub, a spokesman for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, cast the plan as an effort to use funds from wealthy Arab countries “to kill the political aspirations of the Palestinian people.” Kushner’s proposal was unveiled just days before leaders from Egypt, Jordan, Saudia Arabia and several Gulf states will huddle in Bahrain for a conference on Middle East peace.

Abbas, who has declined to send officials to the conference next week, did not mention the White House proposal in a previously scheduled speech on Saturday to the Fatah Central Committee, the top Palestinian decision-making body.

“This is a nice snow job,” Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American businessman based in the West Bank, told Bloomberg, adding that Kushner should “go home.”

Bahour is one of several private-sector leaders in the region who oppose U.S. efforts to broker a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. Groups representing the Palestinian private sector have previously criticized the Trump administration’s desire to offer an economic plan prior to a political vision. They have also accused the administration of worsening already-poor economic conditions by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance in the West Bank and Gaza.

An adviser to the Palestinian private sector and founder of a public relations firm in Jerusalem, Kamel Husseini, said the plan put forward by Kushner and his team was met with criticism because it focuses only on economic conditions in Palestinian territories and not on looming political questions about statehood.

The document released by the White House on Saturday calls for a $50 billion investment in Palestinian terriroties through contributions from donor countries and private capital. More than half would be spent on infrastructure projects and other initiatives in the West Bank and Gaza, while the remaining funds would be distributed to Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon.

Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, the U.S. envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, said the plan would be reviewed in Bahrain this week. It is likely to be supplemented by a political plan later this fall.

“For too long the Palestinian people have been trapped in inefficient frameworks of the past,” Kushner said in a statement. “The Peace to Prosperity plan is a framework for a brighter, more prosperous future for the Palestinian people and the region and a vision of what is possible if there is peace.”