Analyzing The Spoken And Unspoken At Today’s Trump-Abbas Press Conference

Today, Mahmoud Abbas met US President Donald Trump at the White House. And if you believe the Times of Israel’s founding editor David Horovitz, you will think it all went down so well for Abbas, that Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu will have some very sleepless nights.

Trump’s welcome for Abbas is so warm he might have been hosting an Israeli leader

Donald Trump’s joint appearance Wednesday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas must have made for deeply troubling viewing in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

The US president, who was expected to be far tougher on the Palestinians than his predecessor Barack Obama, could hardly have been more warm, gracious and welcoming.

The US president who has not given a carte blanche for settlement building, and who has not — or at least not yet — moved the embassy to Jerusalem, again disappointed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; he could not have given Abbas an easier time.

Trump, in complete contrast, made clear throughout his brief remarks that he regards Abbas as a central, viable part of the solution.

He hailed Abbas for signing the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn 24 years ago, recalling that his guest was a signatory to that first agreement and hoping that the PA president would, in due course, be able to sign a final, permanent accord.

Clearly placing Abbas on the good side of the battle against terrorism, he noted that Abbas has spoken out against terror, and he enthused about what he called the “unbelievable,” “beautiful” relationship that Abbas’s security forces have with their Israeli counterparts.

He certainly warned that there could be “no lasting peace” unless the Palestinian leadership spoke in a unified voice against violence and hatred. But that was the mildest of upbraids; there was no direct accusation that Abbas has been doing anything wrong.

Here is the full press conference. Needless to say, I think Horovitz has completely misread the situation.

I have a number of observations on what we just saw:

  • At the very beginning of the speech, Trump refers to Abbas as having last visited 24 years ago, as he stood with “a courageous peacemaker.” Trump then makes clear he is referring to Yitzhak Rabin, in what seems to be a huge diss of Yasser Arafat!
  • I am not a body language expert, but Abbas touches his face right as Trump talks about bringing safety, stability and prosperity to BOTH peoples
  • Trump says peace also means defeating ISIS and “other terrorist groups.” He does not mention any other such groups by name, but does speak of partnering with the Palestinian security forces to defeat them, clearly referring to palestinian terrorist groups. I assume Trump knows full well from his talks with Binyamin Netanyahu that the palestinian security forces also count terrorists among their number, so perhaps there is a veiled threat here for Abbas to clean things up in this regard.
  • Trump comes out strongly against incitement to violence by the palestinian leaders. That includes Abbas.
  • When Abbas speaks about fighting terrorism, he only mentions fighting ISIS!
  • Abbas speaks about Israel ending its 50-year “occupation,” even though in Arabic he speaks about the occupation as being from 1948 (and the logo of his own Fatah party shows the entire state of Israel, not just the so-called “occupied territories”). Another example of his doublespeak.
  • Trump’s body language is telling. When Abbas is speaking, he hardly looks at him. Even when he turns to him, his eyes are darting around. But when he met Netanyahu earlier this year, Trump looked directly at him. Don’t believe me? Compare and contrast:

He clearly trusts Netanyahu over Abbas.

9 thoughts on “Analyzing The Spoken And Unspoken At Today’s Trump-Abbas Press Conference”

  1. Trump is a businessman, who “wants to make a deal”. Businesspeople who make deals, will have lunch, wine and dine the other party, compliment them, have chitchat. That is the process whether the goal is a contract, a merger, or to break the other company apart piece by piece. You don’t start the process of making a deal by dressing down one of the parties in the deal. Abbas is, for all intents and purposes, a dictator, being in the thirteenth (?) year of his elected four year term. Only he is much less than a dictator as he actually does not have the support of his people. He is ineffectual, but there are no better alternatives, and there are several worse ones. And just like in business, this is what Trump has to work with.
    I’m not at all an expert in politics but I can see two other points re the “not at all hidden meanings” of Trump’s words. The first is easy – Trump’s optimism/ narcissism. He wants to be the deal maker. He said this before he was president. The other point – Trump praised how well the Israeli and Palestinian security forces worked together. He said that he found this out when he “had meetings”. Trump had already met with Netanyahu. Who do you think he had meetings with? I would assume it was with the Israelis. I would not be surprised if Trump had discussed in detail his upcoming meeting with Abbas, with Netanyahu. I doubt very much that Netanyahu would have been either surprised or disappointed, as he probably knew what Trump would say, before the public and Mr Horovitz.
    Why would an editor of a newspaper be so dishonest? Just to have an angle to his piece?

    1. “Why would an editor of a newspaper be so dishonest?”
      Look, Horovitz has disappointedly turned the Times of Israel into only a somewhat less appaling version of Ha’aretz.
      “Two state solution”…..”the peace process”……code words for national suicide that for G-d knows why the Israeli Left (along with American Jewish so-called “liberals”) has embraced, knowing full well the genocidal intentions of Fatah/Hamas, who are simply two sides of the same coin, albeit with varied methods.
      I don’t trust Trump, and I impatiently wait for an Israeli leader who will take back our sovereignty, starting with putting to bed once and for all the myth of a workable “two state solution” (rather than continuing to regurgitate the lie, ala Bibi) when the other half of that equation has never stopped making crystal clear to anyone with eyes and ears that acceptance of Jewish sovereignty of any size or shape is a non-starter.
      Leftist American Jews have an age-old disease to be sure, but Leftist Israeli Jews? How much more proof is needed when leaving Lebanon and Gaza leads to only increased hostility and death, and yet they are ready and willing to recreate the same only a few kilometers from Ben Gurion Int’l, and our heartland?
      Unfathomable, yet there you have it.

    2. trump doesnt make deals….he sues
      he hasnt made a single real deal since becoming president…he has whined and pouted and blamed dems when he doesnt get his way
      he will screw israel over…..believe me

      1. Wow! Do you work in the Oval Office?! Such knowledge of the goings on.
        Quit it! Prepare to have even your future analysis debunked!

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