WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- A U.S. team is in the process of finalizing President Donald Trump’s "ultimate deal" for "peace” between Palestinians and the occupying regime of Israel, Middle East Eye said on Wednesday, citing a Western diplomat and Palestinian officials.
The deal will include the establishment of a Palestinian state, whose borders will include the Gaza Strip as well as Areas A, B and parts of Area C in the West Bank.
Donor countries will provide $10 billion to establish the state and its infrastructure including an airport, a sea port in Gaza, housing, agriculture, industrial areas and new cities.
The status of Jerusalem al-Quds and the issue of returning refugees will be postponed until later negotiations.
Final negotiations will include regional peace talks between the Zionist regime and Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, the report said of the other conditions.
The diplomat said that Jared Kushner, Trump’s special adviser and head of his team for the process, visited Saudi Arabia recently and briefed Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, who is also known as MBS, about the plan.
Kushner also asked the Saudis to help persuade Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to accept the plan, which will be officially presented in early 2018.
The diplomat, who is very close to the U.S. team, said bin Salman had met with Abbas in early November to brief him on the proposal. The crown prince asked the Palestinian president to accept the plan and be positive about it.
"MBS is very enthusiastic about the plan,” the diplomat said, "and he is eager to see a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel first, then between Israel and the Arab countries, as a first step in forming a coalition between Saudi Arabia and Israel to counter the Iranian threat.”
The diplomat said that bin Salman told Kushner he is willing to invest large amounts of capital in the deal, and would give the Palestinian leadership the necessary incentives for a positive response.
Palestinian officials told MEE that Abbas met with bin Salman during his recent visit to Riyadh, which began on 8 November. There, he offered to increase Saudi financial support to the Palestinian Authority almost three-fold from $7.5 million a month to $20 million.
Bin Salman told Abbas that the Iranian threat to Arab countries was serious, sources close to the talks said, and that Saudi was in serious need of support from the United States and Israel to face its "existential conflict" with Tehran.
"We cannot have Israel on our side before solving the Palestinian-Israel conflict," the source reported the crown prince as saying.
One Palestinian official said: "President Abbas believes the plan could be okay only if we add to it the words '1967 borders'. We are willing to give Israel time if they are willing to give us land.
"We told them, if the plan states clearly that the 'ultimate deal' is to have Palestinian statehood (based) on the 1967 borders with a slight land swap, (then) we will accept the first stage of it, which (is) establishing a state with provisional borders.”
The official, who is close to the talks, said the only Palestinian concerns were that the occupying regime of Israel will make the provisional deal final.
Another Palestinian official said Abbas believes the plan, which was drafted by Kushner and Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, initially originated from Zionist PM Benjamin Netanyahu. "This is Netanyahu’s plan and he sold it the U.S. team and they are trying to sell it to the Palestinians and Arabs,” the source said.
The official added that the Palestinians are now expecting more pressure from Washington and Arab capitals.
"The U.S. is waving sanctions against the Palestinians if they reject the plan, like shutting down the PLO mission office in Washington DC and stopping the financial aid to the Palestinian Authority,” the source said.
That threat came to pass this week as the U.S. shut down the office of the Palestinian representative in Washington and the Palestinians in turn froze all meetings with the U.S., officials said on Tuesday.
Many Palestinians say they would reject any Saudi-led "peace” deal which compromised on the right of return of Palestinian refugees and sought to "normalize" Arab relations with Israel.
"This will never be accepted by any Palestinian, inside Palestine, outside Palestine, anywhere," Major General Sobhi Abu Arab, the Palestinian national security chief in the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp in Sidon, Lebanon, told MEE.
"This is not a new idea. It is brought up every so often and Abu Mazen (Abbas) would never agree to it."
"These are empty words that have been used for decades."

Zafer al-Khateeb, a Palestinian activist inside Ain el-Helweh, said that the occupying regime of Israel was seeking to use the opportunity with Saudi Arabia to "break the taboo on Arab normalization with Israel."
"They know the right of return cannot be removed. That is not to say there isn’t something being cooked. There is certainly work being done, but until now it is unclear and there is no reality on the ground," he said.