Tillerson: Trump ‘Putting A Lot Of Pressure’ On Israel And Palestinians
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu after Trump’s speech at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, May 23, 2017 Image by Getty Images
WASHINGTON (JTA) – President Donald Trump is “putting a lot of pressure” on Israel and the Palestinians to restart peace talks, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.
“The president was very forceful in his encouragement to both of them to be serious about approaching these discussions in the future and recognize you have to compromise,” Tillerson said in Rome, where he was accompanying Trump on his first overseas trip as president. Trump had just visited Israel and the Palestinian areas.
“Everyone has to compromise,” Tillerson said. “So he was putting a lot of pressure on them that it was time to get to the table,” noting Trump has “made the point several times.”
Trump earned a warm welcome from the Israelis and the Palestinians, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear during the trip that he preferred Trump to his predecessor, Barack Obama, whom he believed pressured Israel too much.
Tillerson also said, “We solve the Israeli-Palestinian peace dilemma, we start solving a lot of the peace throughout the Middle East region,” a linkage that Netanyahu, who has said peace with other states is achievable before Israeli-Palestinian issues are resolved, has in the past forcefully rejected.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Dive In
-
Fast Forward After announcing LGBTQ club, Yeshiva U president says Pride values ‘antithetical’ to the school
-
Fast Forward Stef Wertheimer, one of Israel’s richest men, dies at 98
-
Fast Forward Israeli government increases politicians’ role in selecting judges, passing key piece of judicial overhaul
-
Fast Forward Reform leader condemns Khalil’s arrest, says campus crackdown risks greater antisemitism
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
Fast Forward A Palestinian man in Philadelphia served kosher bagels for decades. Then customers found his Facebook profile.
- 3
Opinion Is this new documentary giving voice to American Jewish anguish — or simply stoking fear?
- 4
Fast Forward Trump’s antisemitism chief shares ‘Jew card’ post from white supremacist
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion The Supreme Court is taking on 3 cases that could help reshape American Jewish life
-
Books Why Jews were like everyone else — only more so — during slavery and the Civil War
-
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
-
Yiddish לאָמיר פֿאַרגלײַכן צוויי רוסישע נוסחאָות פֿון באַשעוויסעס ראָמאַן „דער שאַרלאַטאַן“Comparing two Russian versions of Bashevis’s novel ‘The Charlatan’
איין איבערזעצונג קלינגט אויף רוסיש גאַנץ נאַטירלעך, און די צווייטע — נישט. וואָס טוט זיך דאָ?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.