Israeli minister dismisses Trump peace plan as 'waste of time'

A senior Israeli minister has said Donald Trump’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan would be a “waste of time”.

“The gap between the Palestinians and the Israelis is much too big to be bridged,” the justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, said at a conference organised by the Jerusalem Post newspaper.

“I think, personally, it’s a waste of time,” she said, speaking in English. “Although I want peace more than anyone else, I think I am just more realistic, and I know that in the current future it is impossible,” she said. “But let’s wait and see what they [the US] will offer.”

Asked if she would tell the US president not to “waste his time with this”, she replied: “Definitely.”

Her statement could vex Trump, who has previously publicised his yet-to-be-released plan as the “deal of the century” and tasked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to draft the agreement.

While Washington has focused on Palestinian objections to its peacemaking efforts, there is also little enthusiasm to restart peace talks among the Israeli public and influential figures in government.

A poll last month found 73% of Israelis did not believe negotiations would lead to peace. Theprime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has also said he does not see any urgency in having the plan released.

Shaked is a senior cabinet minister in Netanyahu’s coalition government and a member of the rightwing Jewish Home party, a religious-nationalist group that rejects any notion of a creating an independent Palestinian country.

Trump said in late September that he expected the plan, two years in the making, to be announced within four months, although diplomats in Jerusalem expect delays.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian leadership has rejected the US’s traditional role as a mediator following Trump’s decision in December to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and declare the city the country’s capital.

Jerusalem is a critical issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of any future state, while Israel captured that part of the city from Jordanian forces in 1967 and have since occupied it, claiming all of the holy city as the “undivided” capital.

US punitive measures against Palestinians have also added vitriol and lessened Washington’s standing.

This year, Trump cut hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid, shuttered Palestinian diplomatic offices in Washington, and closed a US consulate that serves the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Palestinians accuse Trump of siding with Israel on the core issues of the decades-old conflict and see the team drafting the plan as staunchly pro-Israel.

Jason Greenblatt, a former chief legal officer at the Trump Organization and now special representative for international negotiations, has said the plan would “be heavily focused on Israeli security needs” while remaining “fair to the Palestinians”.

Another key figure, David Friedman, a former Trump bankruptcy lawyer and now the US ambassador to Israel, is an outspoken supporter of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are considered illegal by most world powers.

Palestinians have limited self-rule in the West Bank. Israel controls most of the territory while expanding settlements, which Palestinians and their supporters say greatly complicate efforts to achieve a two-state peace plan.