Netanyahu said to tell cabinet still no ‘concrete’ US peace plan

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told cabinet ministers on Sunday that there is still no “concrete” US peace plan.

“At the moment, there is no concrete American peace plan on the table. I’m not saying there won’t be, but at the moment there isn’t,” Channel 10 quoted him as saying.

Though there have been many reported leaks of the Trump administration’s peace plan, as yet no details have been officially released and there has been no date for when it will be presented.

Speaking after he met last week with US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu told reporters that very little time was spent discussing a peace plan.

“The issue of the Palestinians came up in the terms I described — the security question,” Netanyahu said. “Not more than quarter of the time [we discussed] the Palestinians.”

In a report in the UAE-based Al Khaleej online earlier this month, a Palestinian Authority official said that top Israeli and Saudi Arabian officials had held a series of secret meetings in Cairo, ahead of Trump’s expected unveiling of his long-awaited plan.

The US administration is expected to announce the main points of its peace plan in the coming weeks, the Egyptian newspaper said. Administration officials have said the plan is close to completion, but have also refused to give a timeline for when it might be published.

The privately owned Egyptian newspaper Al Shorouk reported that the Americans have notified some Arab capitals that Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is “part of an American effort to persuade Israel, especially the hardliners, to agree to possible concessions to the Palestinians.”

Trump has repeatedly said Israel will have to “pay a price” for the dramatic December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as its capital, though he has not detailed the  concessions entailed. Netanyahu told reporters after meeting Trump last week that the issue had never come up between them.