Aftandilian in The Arab Weekly on Trump’s Peace Plan
Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent Op-Ed on the United States peace plan on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Aftandilian’s Op-Ed, entitled “Trump Peace Plan To Be Unveiled Soon But There Are No Takers,” was published on April 21, 2019 in The Arab Weekly.
From the text of the article:
After congratulating Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for his election victory, US President Donald Trump expressed optimism that a soon-to-be-revealed US peace plan would be successful. He said: “I think we now have a better chance [of achieving a peace deal] with Bibi (Netanyahu’s nickname) having won.”
It was no secret that Trump not only favoured Netanyahu and his Likud party in the recent Israeli elections but went out of his way to give him a number of political gifts, such as recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US Embassy to that city, recognising Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation and being silent when Netanyahu declared during the last days of the campaign his intention to annex the settlements in the West Bank.
These efforts by Trump may have secured Netanyahu’s victory because he and Likud were in a very tight race with the Blue and White political alliance led by former Israeli security chiefs. Netanyahu championed his friendship with Trump during the campaign and boasted that, because of these close ties with the American president, he achieved many benefits for Israel, implying that other leaders would never have been so successful. This was all the more important for Netanyahu with corruption charges hanging over his head.
Aftandilian spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill where he was foreign policy adviser to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-2008), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-2004), and foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999).