President Donald Trump on Wednesday boasted that his administration will achieve peace in the Middle East.
“We want to create peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” Trump said during a joint statement with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. “We will get it done. We will be working so hard to get it done. It’s been a long time, but we will be working diligently.”
“I think there’s a very, very good chance you and I think you feel the same way,” he added, addressing Abbas directly.
Trump said he is “committed to working with Israel and the Palestinians to reach an agreement.”
“I will do whatever is necessary to facilitate the agreement, to mediate, to arbitrate, anything they’d like to do,” Trump said. “But I would love to be a mediator or an arbitrator or a facilitator and we will get this done.”
Speaking through a translator, Abbas said that Trump has “the determination” and “the desire” to see such a peace effort “come to fruition.”
“As far as a permanent solution, we believe that this is possible and able to be resolved,” Abbas said.
Trump has tasked his son-in-law Jared Kushner with brokering Middle Eastern peace, which Trump called the “toughest deal in the world.”
“If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can,” Trump told Kushner on the eve of his inauguration.
During a joint press conference in February with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump claimed his administration’s peace deal “might be a bigger and better deal than people in this room even understand.”
“We will work something out,” Trump said then. “But I would like to see a deal be made. I think a deal will be made.”
