It was Tuesday, so it must have been Amman — for those who recognize the allusion we’re applying to the week-long five-stop tour of the Middle East by Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt who, along with US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman comprise the Trump brain-trust for an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. Described by the White House in vague diplo-speak, the visit’s understated goal included talks with King Abdullah II on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and events in the Gaza Strip. The related buzz was more specific, suggesting that Kushner and Greenblatt have reached a critical mass and this trip constitutes laying the exact groundwork the parties believe is necessary in order to reveal the peace plan notwithstanding the continued refusal by the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, to have any contact with the United States. Despite the ostensible and cliched attribution of Palestinian angst to President Trump’s declaration that Jerusalem is the Israeli capital, in the words of one pundit who declines to be identified, “if that was so, we would have a deal.” Earlier this week, Netanyahu made his own visit to Abdullah in a move pundits also see as lining up the team’s ducks. The American duo has been fundraising for about one billion dollars in projects for the Gaza Strip even as the air-strikes-for-rockets continues.
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