Jen Psaki says the Trump administration didn't do 'anything constructive' to bring peace to the Middle East calling Jared Kushner's Israel-Palestinian plan 'dead on arrival'
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that the Trump administration didn't do 'anything constructive' to bring peace to the Middle East.
'Aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival, we don't think they did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East,' Psaki told reporters on board Air Force One on Tuesday.
The plan she was referring to was the one put together by former President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and introduced in January 2020, which was embraced by Israel but considered a non-starter by the Palestinians, who felt it too biased in favor of the Jewish state.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki, photographed Monday, said Tuesday that the Trump administration didn't do 'anything constructive' to help peace in the Middle East, saying the Trump peace proposal was 'dead on arrival'
Psaki was critical of a Middle East peace plan created by Jared Kushner (left) and rolled out in January 2020 that was considered to be too biased toward Israel. Kushner was photographed in East Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) in August 2017
President Donald Trump (left) is photographed in the Oval Office in August 2020 with son-in-law and White House aide Jared Kushner (right). Kushner and his aide Avi Berkowitz helped negotiate the Abraham Accords in the final month's of Trump's one term in office
Smoke is seen rising after Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on Tuesday. A total of 213 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including 61 children, since the conflict started last Monday, with President Joe Biden saying he supported a ceasefire
Psaki gaggled with reporters as President Joe Biden traveled to a Ford plant in Michigan and was asked if it might be 'time to rethink the thinking behind the Abraham Accords.'
The Abraham Accords, which were negotiated during Trump's final months in office, were peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and then Israel and Bahrain.
The accords normalized relations between Israel and the two Arab nations.
They were negotiated with the help of Kushner and his aide, Avi Berkowitz.
A month after President Joe Biden came into office, in February 2021, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the accords were 'not a substitute for Israeli-Palestinian peace.'
'We hope that Israel and other countries in the region join together in a common effort to build bridges and ... contribute to tangible progress towards the goal of advancing a negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians,' Price said.
The reporter mentioned to Psaki that the Abraham Accords seemed to say, 'Forget the Palestinian, they're not a problem. We're just going to move on.'
'I would say that we are not following the same tactics of the prior administration,' Psaki answered. 'We - the president has reinstated humanitarian assistance and security assistance to the Palestinians.'
'That's something that was stopped back in 2018 and we felt was not a constructive action by the prior administration,' Psaki added.
Biden has called for a cease fire in the region as the battle between Israel and Hamas enters day nine and has caused over 200 deaths and a humanitarian crisis in the region.
A total of 213 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including 61 children, since the conflict started last Monday.
The IDF says that figure includes 120 members of Hamas and 25 members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
'So, obviously, we're dealing with a conflict that is happening as we speak. Right? It is happening on the ground. People's lives are being lost. There's ongoing violence. We're going to work to resolve that,' Psaki continued.
'But our view continues to be that providing that humanitarian and security assistance to the Palestinians while still maintaining our longstanding security relationship with Israel is in the interest of the United States, and a two-state solution - which both parties would have to get together to agree on - is the only way to have a long-term outcome that's peaceful and lasting,' she said.
Republicans, including former Vice President Mike Pence, have been critical of the Biden administration's handling of the crisis.
Pence came out swinging Tuesday with a video and an op-ed blaming Biden's 'weakness' of not standing up for Israel for the uptick in violence.
'Instead of seeking peace through strength, President Biden has offered weakness and ambivalence and, tragically, our friends in Israel are paying a terrible price,' Pence said.
Some progressive Democrats have been critical of Biden too, with Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who the president met with during Tuesday's Michigan trip, saying on MSNBC that the Biden administration was 'taking orders from [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, who is on corruption charges from stealing from his own people, the people he's supposed to be representing.'
Tlaib is the only Palestinian member of Congress and has family in the region.
'Enough, President Biden,' Tlaib said. 'You will not do this on our watch. You have to speak out against this violence in a very aggressive way that holds Netanyahu and his leadership accountable.'
