Speaking in a private, on-the-record briefing Wednesday, Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to President Donald J. Trump, described aspects of the newly released White House peace plan as an “amazing step to break a logjam” in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
“We unified Israel around a serious proposal,” Kushner said — referring to the fact that both Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his electoral rival, Benny Gantz, had endorsed the plan. The two leaders had come together, he said, “both in terms of agreeing to negotiate on the basis of a plan, and also on getting a map, which has never been put out in the history of this conflict.”
But while “President Trump obviously has a lot of trust with the people of Israel and leadership of Israel,” Kushner added, that does not mean the United States will respond unfavorably to Palestinian political engagement. “If Palestinians would come to the table,” he said, “there are things the U.S. would be flexible on.”
Kushner noted that U.S. and Arab interests in ending the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate are “largely the same,” in that “this conflict has been used for radicalization. … This deal, or even just the offer of it, takes away those arguments from the jihadis, because now the Palestinian people have the opportunity to have a state,” including “a capital in east Jerusalem” and economic development opportunities. The advisor attached special significance to the plan’s call for international freedom of religious pilgrimage to all of Jerusalem’s holy places, notably the Al-Aqsa mosque.
Kushner distinguished the peace plan from the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative in that the latter was “a major breakthrough but … not a detailed document. … Since then you’ve had people wordsmith 2-3-page conceptual documents trying to get a breakthrough.” He said that the Trump plan, by contrast, is an 80-page operational document.
In response to a followup question by Majalla concerning Palestinian “days of rage” protests following the release of the document, Kushner indicated that those demonstrations had been organized by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The Palestinian people have been “lied to for a long time and promised false things,” he observed. But the longest-standing refugee problem in history has been diminished in the twenty-first century, Kushner said, as “now we have 70 million refugees throughout the world.” Of the Palestinian leadership, he said, “It will be very hard for them to play the victim card going forward and continue to raise money … when they have a real offer on the table.”
