US ambassador Friedman: No peace plan any time soon

The U.S. diplomat said that the contents of the plan are “pretty much completed,” but that there is some more “wordsmithing and smoothing” that still has to be done.

By David Jablinowitz, World Israel News 

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman hinted on Sunday that the Trump Administration will not be releasing its Middle East peace plan in the near future.

Friedman was speaking in Jerusalem with American reporters who were covering U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton’s visit to Israel. The ambassador said that the release of the plan would be postponed by “several months” because of the Israeli election scheduled for April 9 and the ongoing refusal by the Palestinian Authority to accept the plan.

The U.S. diplomat said that the contents of the plan are “pretty much completed,” but that there is some more “wordsmithing and smoothing” that still has to be done.

“The challenge to a peace plan is making the case for a much more sober assessment of the realities in this region,” he said. “The last time there was a meaningful agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians was 1993. A lot has happened since 1993.”

Bolton’s talks in Israel were expected to center around a different issue, that of the situation in Syria, and in particular, President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

At the weekly Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “I will discuss with him [Bolton] the efforts to halt the Iranian aggression in our region, the situation in Syria following President Trump’s decision.”

Bolton visited the Western Wall and took a tour of the tunnels there Sunday. He was accompanied by Friedmanas well as Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer, and received explanations at the site by Rabbi Mordechai Eliav, chairman of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation.