WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump, hosting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, pledged Wednesday to attempt "the toughest deal" _ peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
"I've always heard that perhaps the toughest deal to make is the deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians," Trump said, Abbas at his side. "Let's see if we can prove them wrong."
Trump, described as being fixated on delivering a Mideast peace accord, welcomed the 82-year-old Palestinian leader for their first face-to-face meeting, with hopes he can bring the two sides back to the negotiating table.
Abbas responded with optimism and praise for Trump's deal-making ability, even though his list of Palestinian requirements for peace was unchanged from that aired during decades of earlier failed negotiations. Those include a viable, independent Palestinian state next to Israel _ the so-called two-state solution that Trump has not fully endorsed.
"Mr. President, you have the determination and the desire to bring (a deal) to fruition," Abbas said. "We hope, God willing, we are coming to a new opportunity, a new horizon to bring it about."
Trump has tasked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well as his longtime real estate lawyer, Jason Greenblatt, with setting the stage for a fresh round of peace talks.
But when it comes to what an eventual solution should look like, Trump has told close advisers that he's not picky about the details, or even the broad outlines.
True to form, the president's public comments Wednesday were brief. Although Trump has been less vocal about moving the U.S. Embassy in Israeli to Jerusalem, an act that would infuriate the Palestinians, his vice president, Mike Pence, said on the eve of Wednesday's meeting that Trump "as we speak, is giving serious consideration" to the relocation.
"President Trump stands without apology for Israel, and he always will," Pence told a group of Israeli diplomats and others gathered Tuesday on the White House grounds to mark Israeli Independence Day.
Trump has expressed a willingness to jettison the longstanding U.S. stance that any resolution should be based on a two-state solution, in which Israel and a Palestinian state live side-by-side, hoping that would spur the two sides to look for more creative solutions. But other members of his administration, including Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, have said the United States remains committed to a two-state solution.
Fundamental issues as well as small details have sunk past attempts to solve one of the most challenging foreign policy riddles any U.S. president faces.
During a phone call in March, Trump invited Abbas to the White House with the intention of talking about how to move toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He previously hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he seemed to have a genuinely friendly rapport.
Among the demands that Trump may make of Abbas is an end to Palestinian Authority payments to the families of Palestinians who were killed carrying out terrorist attacks against Israelis, or who are in Israeli prisons. Some of that money comes from the United Nations, and a bill is making its way through Congress to suspend U.S. funding for the U.N. as a result.
But Abbas suffers from abysmally low popularity ratings at home, and it will be tough for him to make concessions to Trump or to Israel.
Trump also hopes to enlist some Sunni Muslim Arab allies in crafting a deal. Several, especially among the Persian Gulf states, have quietly signaled willingness to cooperate with the administration, and, by extension, with Israel, in exchange for tougher actions against their common enemy, Shiite Muslim Iran.
