Greenblatt Said His Work on Peace Plan has Left Him ‘Proud, Grateful, Surprised, Sad, and Hopeful’

JERUSALEM (JTA) — White House Middle East peace envoy Jason Greenblatt, who announced that he will return to his family and the private sector, wrote in an Op-Ed that his work on an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan has left him “proud, grateful, surprised, sad, and hopeful.”

“I wonder if my deceased grandparents who fled Hungary with their families decades ago — one from the Holocaust and one from communism — could have imagined their grandson would one day serve in the White House, attempting to solve one of the most complex conflicts in history,” Greenblatt wrote in the Op-Ed published Friday by CNN.

Greenblatt met on Friday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, in a meeting also attended by U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and by Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer. The meeting came three days after national elections in Israel which did not produce a clear-cut winner. Benny Gantz’s Blue and White Party told reporters in a statement that the U.S. Embassy had requested to schedule a meeting between Gantz and Greenblatt.

The Trump administration had said it would release the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in the days following the Sept. 17 election in Israel, though no date has been announced.

“Nothing is perfect, and compromises are necessary. I am deeply hopeful that the vision we created will appeal to Israelis and Palestinians enough to start down the hard road of negotiating a peace agreement, and that peace extends to the countries in the region beyond Jordan and Egypt. If the vision achieves peace, the lives of millions of people will be so much better,” Greenblatt wrote.