Martin Indyk
18 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
them into submission by cutting o aid,
closing down the Palestine Liberation
Organization’s oce in Washington and
the U.S. consulate general in Jerusalem,
and attempting to eliminate the £ Relie
and Works Agency for Palestine Refu-
gees in the Near East. Once again, as
anybody with experience in the region
could have predicted, this didn’t work.
Punishing the Palestinians only made
them dig in their heels and rally behind
their (otherwise unpopular) leadership.
Without the Saudis and the Palestin-
ians, Kushner had little chance to secure
Egyptian or Jordanian support for the
crucial part o the plan, the political and
security arrangements. King Abdullah o
Jordan, in particular, became increasingly
alarmed by the prospect that he might
have to choose between Trump and the
Palestinians i Kushner came forward
with Trump’s ideas. King Abdullah’s
largely Palestinian population would be
furious i he accepted the plan, yet he
feared alienating Trump and jeopardiz-
ing his billion-dollar annual aid package
i he rejected it. (The Palestinian Au-
thority was already Änding alternatives
to Trump’s aid cuts, but those sources
weren’t available to Jordan.) Neverthe-
less, when Kushner made his Änal ask
this past summer, the king refused—after
which the launch o the full plan was
once again rescheduled for some “more
appropriate” time. Recognizing that it
had no future, Greenblatt resigned.
Another Saudi-inspired initiative, the
proposed Middle East Strategic Alliance,
also went nowhere. Riyadh assumed
that Trump could pull the neighboring
Arab states into a coalition to counter Iran.
Dubbed the “Arab £¬¡¢,” it had Egypt,
Jordan, and the Gul Cooperation
Council coming together under a U.S.the end o 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as
Israel’s capital and to move the U.S.
embassy there.
MBS was right about the reaction in
the Arab street; it was hardly noticeable.
But he had failed to warn Kushner o the
other consequences. The crown prince
might not have cared about Jerusalem,
but his father certainly did. And while
MBS may have been in day-to-day
control o the kingdom’s aairs, Änal say
still lay with King Salman. The al Aqsa
mosque, in Jerusalem, is Islam’s third-
holiest shrine; as custodian o the two
others, King Salman could not stay
silent. He promptly condemned Trump’s
decision and summoned the region’s
Arab leaders to a meeting the following
April to denounce it collectively. King
Salman has repeatedly stated ever since
that Saudi Arabia will not support any
settlement that does not provide for an
independent Palestinian state with East
Jerusalem as its capital—something
Trump refuses to endorse.
The Jerusalem decision and embassy
move blew up Kushner’s scheme to have
Saudi Arabia play a leading role in the
peace process. It also drove the Pales-
tinians away from the negotiating table.
In the wake o the decision, they cut o
all ocial contact with the Trump
administration, with Abbas condemning
the forthcoming Trump peace plan as “a
shameful bargain” that will “go to hell.”
When Kushner unveiled the economic
dimensions o Trump’s peace plan at a
meeting in Bahrain this past June—de-
signed to show the Palestinians that they
would beneÄt from peace—the Pales-
tinians boycotted the conference.
Bullying was no more eective than
bribing. Trump thought the Palestinians
were so weak that he could bludgeon