Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi:

I will be very quick, yes. First, I thank the Senator for the question. As she knows, President Trump is a man of grand ideas. He is speaking about a grand solution to the problem but we have not yet been officially presented with any ideas. All we hear is that the US is thinking about, talking about and visiting us. Members of President Trump's team have already visited the place 23 times. Perhaps the Americans would be very happy if he were to visit us 23 times himself. This would reduce the amount of tweets. Unfortunately there are three indications that make us worried. The first is that this US Administration is the first in decades which has not spelled out the term "two-state solution" and which has not said that it would support the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Second, this Administration is quite different from previous Administrations in how it responds to Israeli settlement activities.

It is not doing anything. The rate at which settlements expand has increased by 100% since President Trump was elected.

The third problem relates to the nature of the team that is working on the issue. Many people are very suspicious that the team is very biased to Israel and that it adopts Israeli positions. One of them, at least, is definitely not suitable to participate in a peace process. This is the American ambassador in Israel, David Friedman, who declared openly that he supports settlement activities and who is also very proud of the fact that his daughter has volunteered to work in the Israeli army. These aspects make us very worried about the nature of that grand plan, if it is represented.

We also understand that one of the main efforts of the American team is to enforce normalisation between Israel and Arab countries without solving the Palestinian issue and without presenting a solution that would end the occupation.