'Abbas has decided to sign peace deal with Israel' -- Is the Daniel 9:27 final-day peace deal in the works? - Yaakov Katz -
Trump planning to launch new round of talks during his upcoming visit.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has crossed the Rubicon and voiced "unprecedented" readiness to reach a peace deal with Israel, sources close to the efforts to renew talks between Israel and the Palestinians have told The Jerusalem Post.
Abbas, according to the sources, made this clear to President Donald Trump during their meeting at the White House last week. The president plans to use his trip to Israel later this month to receive assurances from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he, too, is committed to a peace agreement.
Since his meeting with Trump last week, Abbas has changed his rhetoric, issuing a number of statements meant to reflect flexibility on previous demands. He has, for example, said that he would renew the talks under Trump's auspices without preconditions. In the past, he had said he would not negotiate with Netanyahu without a freeze to settlement construction.
He has also sent his advisers to the press to declare that the Palestinians are prepared to negotiate land swaps with Israel, a recognition that some West Bank settlements will remain part of Israel in the framework of a future deal.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, has largely remained quiet. The strategy within the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem seems to be to wait and hope not to be blamed for preventing the success of the peace talks Trump is planning to restart following his visit on May 22.
As reported earlier this week in Maariv and the Post, the person responsible for this change in Abbas is Ronald Lauder, the American billionaire and head of the World Jewish Congress, who is one of the closest people to Trump. Lauder has publicly said that he has known Trump for over 50 years and that he is a "great and true friend" of Israel.
Before Abbas met with Trump last week, he stopped by Lauder's house for dinner and got briefed on ways to win over the president. To some, it seems that Lauder has bypassed Sheldon Adelson as the most influential Jew in Trump's circle.
Lauder has been pushing for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal for years and was in Cairo two months ago for a meeting with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ahead of the Egyptian leader's visit to the White House. Lauder, sources say, seems to have been tapped by the president as something of a semi-official envoy to the region with an emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Politicians who spoke to Lauder at Sunday's Jerusalem Post Conference in New York later told the Post that he told them about his meeting with Abbas. At the same time, Netanyahu told confidants that he was furious over the American Jewish leader's involvement.
"You don't understand how much influence he has over Trump," the prime minister told a confidant in a private conversation this week.
"Out of the people around Trump, he is my biggest challenge to overcome."
Abbas, in meeting with Putin, says Moscow must be part of peace process - By Dov Lieber -
Two leaders participate via video link in inauguration of $40 million Russian-sponsored Putin cultural center in Bethlehem
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Sochi resort in Western Russia on Thursday, and said that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be "impossible" without the participation of Moscow in the peace process.
"It is impossible to solve the Palestinian issue without Russia's meaningful participation in the peace process. That is what we have been emphasizing at all international meetings," Abbas said in his meeting with Putin, according to the official Russian State news agency Tass.
Putin said Russia "will continue to give its full support to the resumption of direct dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis."
"The peaceful coexistence of the two states - Palestine and Israel - is an indispensable condition to ensure genuine security and stability in this region," Putin said.
Abbas, according to a report in the official PA news site Wafa, also reiterated that he is still willing to participate in a three-way summit with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow.
"We are ready to accept this invitation at anytime," Abbas said.
"We had planned to meet in Moscow, but he didn't show up," Abbas said earlier this month, referring to Netanyahu in the context of Russian efforts to set up such a meeting last year.
Netanyahu and Abbas have repeatedly declared their willingness for face-to-face talks, and blamed each other for dodging the proposed September 2016 meet-up in Moscow.
On Tuesday, in a press conference with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Abbas said he was willing to meet with Netanyahu under the auspices of US President Donald Trump, who he met earlier in the month.
Before their closed-door meeting, Abbas and Putin participated via video link in an inauguration ceremony of a Russian-sponsored $40 million cultural and economic center in Bethlehem. The center is named after Putin.
"The opening of the complex is not only a notable milestone in the development of the Russian-Palestinian relationship, but also evidence of the strong friendship between our countries and our nations," Putin told the inauguration ceremony.
Ziyad al-Bandak, the director of the new center, told Wafa that the complex is 15,000 square meters and has six floors.
He said that there is a sports and youth department that consists of judo, karate and Roman wrestling rooms, and a cafeteria. Another section is a music complex and contains a training and teaching hall.
Trump is slated to visit Israel and Bethlehem later in May, and is expected to separately meet Netanyahu and Abbas and use the visit to advance his goal of mediating negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. It is speculated that he may also seek to bring Netanyahu and Abbas together in the course of his May 22-23 visit, but no such plans have been confirmed.
Abbas Foreign Affairs Adviser Nabil Shaath told The Times of Israel on Monday that while the Palestinians are embracing a new round of US-backed talks, they are still committed to working with the wider international community to attain their goal of an independent Palestinian state based on 1967 borders.
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