Trump Dodges Palestinian Trap

The Fellowship | May 8, 2017

President Trump Welcomes Palestinian President Abbas To White House — WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 03: U.S President Donald Trump arrives to give a joint statement with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on May 3, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)

Donald Trump will make his first visit to the Holy Land later this month, a visit that coincides with the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem. But while he is there, Palestinian Authority officials had planned a photo-op ambush. Arutz Sheva’s David Rosenberg reports on the plan to photograph Trump by the grave of terrorist Yasser Arafat:

President Trump was initially slated to walk through the grounds outside the PA’s Muqata government complex to an official reception ceremony with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

The proposed route would take the president right next to the burial place of former PLO leader and arch-terrorist, Yassir Arafat; a detail left out by the PA planners who presented the route to American officials.

Rather than a minor logistic oversight, the move was part of a calculated effort to lay a PR ambush for the president, allowing photographers to catch him in what would appear to be a planned visit to the grave of the deceased terrorist leader.

A senior PA official and aide to Mahmoud Abbas admitted to Israel Hayom that the proposed route’s proximity to Arafat’s grave was no accident.

But perceptive White House aides quickly realized the gravity of the president passing through the planned route, and nixed the plan…