Trump’s Middle East plan will reportedly not include a Palestinian state

Donald Trump’s Middle East “deal of the century” does not include plans for a Palestinian state, according to reports in the Washington Post.

The peace plan being cobbled together by White House adviser Jared Kushner, who is also Trump’s Jewish son-in-law, is expected to offer improvements in the lives of Palestinians but won’t offer them an independent state.

It comes as a range of former prime ministers and foreign ministers from throughout Europe, including Britain’s David Miliband and Jack Straw, called on the European Union not to support Trump’s plan if it does not include a Palestinian state.

Outlines of the deal, for which Kushner has had no input from the Palestinian Authority, are expected to be unveiled soon. His friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman means that it will likely secure Riyadh’s blessing.

However the letter signed by Miliband, Straw and 35 other signatories, some of whom also served in senior positions at the UN, NATO and EU, called for a “just resolution” to the decades-long conflict.

“Unfortunately, the current US administration has departed from longstanding US policy and distanced itself from established international legal norms,” they wrote.

“It has so far recognised only one side’s claims to Jerusalem and demonstrated a disturbing indifference to Israeli settlement expansion,” they said, adding that Trump had also cut Palestinian aid by hundreds of millions of dollars.

“A viable peace requires the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel on borders based on the pre-1967 lines with mutually agreed, minimal and equal land swaps; with Jerusalem as the capital for both states; with security arrangements that address legitimate concerns and respect the sovereignty of each side and with an agreed, fair solution to the question of Palestine refugees.”