Trump’s peace envoy meets Bennett, Livni in Washington

US President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt met separately in Washington with two senior Israeli politicians: Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) and opposition MK Tzipi Livni.

During a meeting on Sunday, which was said have lasted over an hour, Bennett and Greenblatt discussed the Palestinians, the economy and other regional issues, according to a spokesperson for Bennett.

In a series of Twitter posts, Greenblatt said that the two held “a far ranging and important discussion about US-Israel cooperation and interests,” such as “the importance of working to improve the economic life of Palestinians” and Trump’s “vision for peace and his thoughts on how best to achieve it.”

Greenblatt later tweeted that he had hosted Livni, a senior opposition lawmaker in the Zionist Union faction, for Shabbat dinner on Friday night.

https://twitter.com/jdgreenblatt45/status/846085694590259201

He said that Livni was “appreciative of [Trump’s] desire to focus on peace and I look forward to working with her and others in the period ahead.”

Bennett is in Washington to speak at the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC’s annual conference later this week. Livni is also at AIPAC.

Over the past two weeks, Greenblatt has held a series of meetings with Israeli officials in both Jerusalem and Washington, the main focus of which has been to reach an agreement between the two countries on Israeli settlement construction.

After failing to reach an agreement with Greenblatt on the issue during his visit to Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dispatched his chief of staff Yoav Horowitz to Washington last week to continue talks on the matter with Greenblatt alongside Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer.

Although their meetings yielded no agreement, Netanyahu said that “significant progress” was made toward reaching an understanding.

Following reports last week outlining the possible terms of an agreement to limit settlement construction and saying the two sides were close to reaching an understanding, Netanyahu insisted on Sunday that the details of the reported deals were inaccurate and that talks on the issue are ongoing.

According to the Haaretz daily, Netanyahu rejected the terms of a deal under which Israel would cease construction in isolated settlements in exchange for US acceptance of new building in East Jerusalem and settlement blocs. The report said that his rejection stemmed in part from opposition from his coalition’s right flank to a public declaration of any type of settlement freeze. Right-wing members of his Likud party, as well as from the pro-settlement Jewish Home party, which Bennett heads, are adamantly opposed to any freeze.

Since Trump’s election victory in November, Netanyahu and Bennett have clashed over settlement policy, with the education minister saying that, under Trump, Israel has a “unique opportunity” to move ahead with large-scale settlement construction and annex large swathes of the West Bank.

Meanwhile, the prime minister has advocated for reaching a coordinated position with the US administration.

Bennett and his Jewish Home party were major backers of proposed legislation that would annex the large West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, but a vote on the bill scheduled during Greenblatt’s visit was pushed off, apparently in order to avoid friction with the Trump administration.

Neither Greenblatt nor Bennett mentioned after their meeting on Sunday whether they discussed the ongoing talks on reaching an agreement limiting settlement construction, or any possible moves to annex parts of the West Bank.

Raoul Wootliff and Stuart Winer contributed to this report.