Livni urges Trump not to ‘reinvent the wheel,’ but to rekindle 2014 peace talks

Speaking at the Haaretz Peace Conference in Tel Aviv Monday, former peace negotiator MK Tzipi Livni (Zionist Union) calls on the current US administration to adopt the framework agreement that was reached at the time as the basis for new peace talks.

The current US administration does not want to coerce the two sides into an agreement, but US President Donald Trump could take the 2014 framework agreement and declare it the basis for a renewed peace process, Livni says.

In recent days, new details have been revealed about the framework agreement that then-US secretary of state John Kerry presented to Jerusalem and Ramallah. According to the leaks, published in Haaretz, the document called for negotiations based on the 1967 lines.

“There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here. He could invite Netanyahu and Abbas to Mar-a-Lago, or wherever he meets people, and tell them this is the basis for an agreement,” Livni says.

The PA has dropped its preconditions for entering talks, no longer demanding a settlement freeze, “which makes it so much easier to enter the negotiation room,” the former foreign minister says. “At this stage, neither side wants to tell Trump no. So that’s a good point to start.”

— Raphael Ahren