foreignpolicy.com 
<http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/15/mattis-issues-ultimatum-to-nato-transatlantic-defense-security-under-trump-brussels/>
  


Mattis Issues Ultimatum to NATO


Robbie Gramer | 5 hours ago

Speaking at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin 
Netanyahu on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to scuttle 
long-standing U.S. support for a two-state solution between Israelis and 
Palestinians.

If “Bibi” and the Israelis and the Palestinians are all happy, “I am looking at 
two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like… I can live 
with either one,” Trump said.

Abandoning the two-state solution would be a marked departure from bipartisan 
U.S. foreign policy of the past 15 years. The United States has explicitly 
supported the establishment of a two state solution since June of 2002, as 
former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro noted on Twitter 
<https://twitter.com/DanielBShapiro/status/831876266366291969> .

Ahead of the meeting, Husam Zolot, strategic affairs advisor to Palestinian 
President Mahmoud Abbas told Reuters 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-israel-palestinians-idUSKBN15U16S> 
, “The two-state solution is not something we just came up with. It is an 
international consensus and decision after decades of Israel’s rejection of the 
one-state democratic formula.”

Trump’s utterances prompted plenty of concern about the future of the Middle 
East peace process and Israel’s own future.

“The extreme right won tonight. The state of Israel has lost,” tweeted 
<https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/831933951258324994>  Zionist Union MK Erel 
Margalit.

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and once said to 
be in the running for a Trump State Department job, tweeted 
<https://twitter.com/RichardHaass/status/831932767827087368> , “Maybe Pres 
Trump can live with a 1 state ‘solution’ but Israel could not if it wanted to 
remain democratic, Jewish, secure & prosperous.”

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres reiterated through the U.N. 
spokesperson’s Twitter 
<https://twitter.com/UN_Spokesperson/status/831916102405980161>  account that 
“there is no plan B to a 2-state solution.”

Yousef Munayyer of the the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights tweeted 
<https://twitter.com/YousefMunayyer/status/831918792657760258> , “The question 
is no longer one state or two. It is clearly one state. Question now is what 
kind of one state: apartheid or equality.”

Trump may have spoken flippantly at the press conference, not intending to 
signal a sharp break with U.S. policy. But the statement was not inconsistent 
<http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/14/how-donald-trump-and-the-gop-dropped-the-two-state-solution-for-mideast-peace/>
  with his campaign, and administration officials told  
<http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-israel-idUSKBN15U04I> Reuters 
Tuesday that Trump could support a one-state solution, suggesting that the 
president did not improvise on Wednesday.

Netanyahu seemed nonplussed, and dismissed the semantics as a matter of 
“labels.” The prime minister said he is concerned more with substance: 
specifically, the substance of Palestinians recognizing Israel’s right to 
exist, and Israel maintaining security control over territory west of the 
Jordan River.

In response to Trump’s request to “hold off on settlements for a while” in 
pursuit of a peace deal, Netanyahu simply said, “We’ll try,” adding, “That’s 
the art of the deal.”

Later in the press conference, an Israeli journalist asked about the rise of 
anti-Semitic incidents in the United States since Trump’s election, and what 
the president would say to those who believe his administration is “playing 
with xenophobia and maybe racist tones.”

In response, Trump noted that he won 306 electoral college votes and has a 
Jewish daughter, a Jewish son-in-law, and three Jewish grandchildren.

“We are going to do everything in our power to stop long simmering racism and 
every other thing that’s going on,” he said. “I think one of the reasons I got 
elected is because we have a very, very divided nation,” before concluding, 
“You’re going to see a lot of love.”

Photo credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

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Mattis Issues Ultimatum to NATO  
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