US says Egypt, Jordan and Morocco to attend peace workshop
A White House official said Tuesday that Egypt, Jordan and
Morocco have confirmed their attendance at a US conference this month in
Bahrain, where it will unveil the economic portion of its long-awaited plan for
Mideast peace.
The positive responses from key Arab states delivered a
diplomatic victory for the US, which faces tough resistance to its proposed
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Palestinians, citing the Trump administration’s pro-Israel
bias, have already said they will not attend the summit and have rejected the
peace plan out of hand.
The White House hailed the countries’ attendance as “welcome
news,” a sign “that our workshop is gathering momentum as we had anticipated.”
The level of their representatives was not immediately
known, but the US had extended invitations to finance ministers. Saudi Arabia,
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are already scheduled to attend.
Presidential advisers Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt
made personal appeals to the kings of Morocco and Jordan during their recent
Mideast trip to rally support for the plan.
Egypt and Jordan, as US allies and the only Arab countries
that have peace agreements with Israel, occupy delicate political positions.
Their leaders often voice support for a two-state solution to the conflict,
which remains the only internationally accepted option but appears to be at
odds with the little that has been revealed about Trump’s “Deal of the
Century.”
Jordan, which acts as custodian of Muslim holy sites in
Jerusalem and is home to more than 2 million Palestinian refugees, has long
been invested in a solution to the most sensitive issues of the decades-old
conflict. Egypt, which shares a border with the blockaded Gaza Strip, is also a
key regional player.
The US is hoping to draw Arab states with deep pockets to
participate in the workshop, which envisions large-scale infrastructure work
and investment in the Palestinian territories.