Iraq News Now

The United States will not release the long-delayed political

portion of its Israeli-Palestinian peace plan before Israel’s elections next

month, White House Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt said.
The move, announced in a tweet by Greenblatt, keeps the plan’s

details from becoming an issue in the election, in which the leadership of

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump,

is at stake.
“We have decided that we will

not be releasing the peace vision (or parts of it) prior to the Israeli

election,” Greenblatt said on Twitter.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared

Kushner has been working behind the scenes on the plan to resolve the

decades-old Israeli Palestinian conflict, although Palestinians, who say the

Trump administration is too pro-Israel, say it is dead in the water.
A goal to raise tens of

billions of dollars to fund the plan was announced earlier this year, but the

political details have remained under wraps, with Kushner refusing to say even

whether it would offer Palestinians a state of their own.
Trump on Monday had said the

plan might be revealed before the Israeli election.
At a campaign rally on

Wednesday, Netanyahu said he expected the U.S. proposal would not be delayed

for much longer.
“This evening we learned that

President Trump’s ‘deal of century’ would be published and presented to the

world after the election. I can reasonably estimate that it will happen very

soon after the election,” Netanyahu said.
Peace talks between Israel

and the Palestinians collapsed in 2014. The Palestinians seek to establish a

state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital, areas

Israel captured in a 1967 war. Israel moved troops and settlers out of Gaza in

2005 and still occupies the West Bank.