Nikki Haley: ‘Israel wants a peace agreement but it doesn’t need one’
United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley said Tuesday while discussing the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan that “Israel wants a peace agreement but it doesn’t need one.”
President Trump’s outgoing U.N. ambassador said that while a peace deal would help Israel, it is much more important to reach one for Palestinians.
“What awaits the Palestinian people with a peace agreement are the prospects of a massive improvement in the quality of their lives and far greater control over their political future,” she told the U.N. Security Council at one of her last addresses before she leaves her U.N. post at the end of the year.
“It is time we faced a hard truth: both sides would benefit greatly from a peace agreement, but the Palestinians would benefit more, and the Israelis would risk more.”{mosads}
Haley said that Palestinians would gain “far greater political control” under a peace agreement, but did not go as far as pledges from previous U.S. administrations to support a sovereign Palestinian nation.
The Trump administration is set to release its regional peace plan in early 2019, following several delays. Very few details have been given about the plan, but Haley claimed it would greatly benefit the region.
She characterized the U.S. plan as a “choice between a hopeful future that sheds the tired, old and unrealistic demands of the past, or a darker future that sticks with the proven failed talking points.”
She also called the U.N. “hopelessly biased” against Israel.
Trump has selected Heather Nauert, who has served as the State Department’s chief spokesperson since April 2017, to replace Haley after she leaves the Trump administration.
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