PARIS: The US administration is serious about getting a peace deal signed between Israelis and Palestinians, but its proposed plan is still being put together, according to Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister.

President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and eventually move the US embassy there has angered the Palestinians, who question Washington’s role as a sponsor of Middle East peace.

Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is leading efforts to restart negotiations, though his bid has shown little public progress so far.

“We believe the Trump administration is serious about bringing peace between Israelis and Arabs,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al Jubeir, a former ambassador to the United States, told France 24 television late on Wednesday.

“They are working on ideas and consulting all parties, including Saudi Arabia, and they are incorporating the views represented to them by everybody. They have said they would need a little bit of time to put it together to present it.”

Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel overturned decades of US policy and ignored international consensus that the city’s status should be decided only in a future peace agreement.

Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, including the eastern part which it annexed after capturing it in the 1967 war. The Palestinians want the eastern part of the city as capital of a future independent state of their own.

The Trump administration argues that any credible peace plan would put the Israeli capital in Jerusalem, and that moving past the question can help unblock a peace process frozen since 2014. Washington says Trump’s decision does not affect Jerusalem’s borders or future status which can still be decided in talks.

The US president’s aides say the peace plan could be released early next year and Donald Trump has said he hoped for an agreed two-state deal between the two sides.

The Saudi foreign minister emphasised that Riyadh continued to support a two-state solution, which Washington had indicated to the Saudis was its working proposal.

“Whether the administration’s proposals are acceptable to the parties remains to be seen because I don’t believe that the plan the US administration is working on has been finalised yet,” he said.

Adel Jubeir also denied his country had any relations with Israel despite sharing Israel’s concern about the regional influence of Iran. He repeated that Riyadh had a “roadmap” to establish full diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv should there be a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The Jewish state also says it is waiting for Washington to finish drawing up a peace plan.

“The Americans are preparing a peace deal. They did not tell us the details. They did not speak about a `deal of the century’. Rather, they asked what we can accept, and they asked the Palestinians the same thing. And they will offer as they put it something creative,” Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said in an interview with Saudi-owned news site Elaph, published on Wednesday.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2017