Aftandilian in The Arab Weekly on Trump’s Peace Plan
Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent Op-Ed on United States President Donald Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
Aftandilian’s Op-Ed, entitled “Washington Moves Ahead With Peace Plan Despite Dim Prospects,” was published in The Arab Weekly on June 9, 2019.
From the text of the article:
US President Donald Trump and his team, led by son-in-law Jared Kushner, were supposed to unveil their much-anticipated Israeli-Palestinian peace plan soon after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu formed his new government after the election in April.
That this government did not come into being, and that Israel is headed for new elections in September, not only exasperated Trump but put the peace plan on hold. Nonetheless, Trump, bucking conventional wisdom, is likely to use the plan as a cudgel against Democrats in 2020 even if it has virtually no chance of working.
Trump, on June 3, said the political situation in Israel was “all messed up.” He underscored that Israeli politicians “ought to get their act together” but seemed to acknowledge that there was not much he could do about it except to wait for the new Israeli elections to settle things.
Trump not only wanted his friend and political ally Netanyahu to come out a winner by leading a coalition government but to use that opportunity to make public his administration’s long-awaited peace plan, which he said in 2016 would be the “deal of the century.”
Aftandilian spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill where he was foreign policy adviser to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-2008), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-2004), and foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999).