WASHINGTON (Dispatches) –
Former U.S. president Donald Trump has launched another verbal attack on his one-time close ally Benjamin Netanyahu, saying the ex-Zionist prime minister did not want to make peace with the Palestinians.
He made the remarks in a series of interviews with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid earlier this year for an upcoming book, whose excerpts were released on Saturday.
In the taped comments broadcast by Israel’s Channel 12, Trump claimed that when he came into office, he had asked Netanyahu for overtures toward the Palestinians, raising the possibility of a settlement construction freeze in the occupied West Bank, but the Zionist premier often demurred.
“Bibi did not want to make a deal,” he said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “I don’t think Bibi ever wanted to make peace. I think he just tapped us along… ‘No, no, we want to, we want to’… But I think Bibi did not want to make peace. Never did.”
“Now I don’t know if he didn’t want to make it for political reasons, or for other reasons. I wish he would have said he didn’t want to make a deal, instead of…. Because a lot of people devoted a lot of work. But I don’t think Bibi would have ever made a deal. That’s my opinion,” he added.
Trump recalled he then told Netanyahu that “I had a very good meeting with Abbas. We can definitely do a deal. The Israeli leader’s response? ‘Well, let’s think about it. Let’s not move too fast, you know.’ After he started talking, I said, wait a minute, you don’t want to make a deal.”
“And he said, ‘Well, uh, uh, uh.’ And the fact is I don’t think Bibi ever wanted to make a deal. I [had] thought the Palestinians were impossible, and the Israelis would do anything to make peace and a deal. I found that not to be true,” he went on to say.
Despite the facts on the ground, Trump forged deals between the Zionist regime and some Arab states.
The UAE last year became the third majority Arab nation to establish full diplomatic with the Zionist regime, after its neighbors Egypt and Jordan.
Bahrain and Morocco then followed as part of a series of deals brokered by former U.S. president Donald Trump. Sudan also agreed to normalize ties with the regime under the pacts known as the so-called Abraham Accords.
The accords were strongly condemned by the Palestinians as they broke with decades of Arab League consensus against recognizing the occupying regime until it signed a peace establishing a Palestinian state with a capital in east Al-Quds.
The occupying regime’s Naftali Bennett heads to the United Arab Emirates, in the first official visit by a Zionist premier since they established diplomatic ties last year.
Bennett on Monday meets Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan to discuss “deepening the ties between Israel and the UAE, especially economic and regional issues,” Bennett’s office said.
“This is the first official visit by an Israeli prime minister to the UAE,” it added in a statement.