In an interview with a Palestinian newspaper about the developing United States Middle East peace proposal, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and senior adviser to President Donald Trump, said that though he sought to work with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, he questioned the Palestinian leader, “has the ability to, or is willing to, lean into finishing a deal,” according to an English transcript published Sunday in The New York Times.
Kushner described the plan that he and Jason Greenblatt, the administration’s Special Representative for International Negotiations, are developing as being the result of “listening” and “focusing on the people and trying to determine what they actually want.”
While Kushner said that he didn’t want to give away all the details of the peace plan being formulated, he said that for the Palestinians it would focus on items that were deemed most important by the Arab leaders he and Greenblatt had contacted. Some of these included having a Palestinian capital in Abu Dis, a suburb of Jerusalem, as well as providing Palestinians with opportunities for greater economic advancement.
Kushner suggested that the Palestinian people may be more willing to compromise than their leaders, saying that Palestinians “are less invested in the politicians’ talking points than they are in seeing how a deal will give them and their future generations new opportunities, more and better paying jobs and prospects for a better life.”
In response to President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announced intent to move the U.S. embassy there in December of last year, Abbas and his government have been boycotting direct contacts with the U.S. However, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Abbas, called the U.S. effort to develop a peace plan as a “waste of time” and “bound to fail.”
Kushner brushed aside the comment saying that he viewed the Palestinian leadership as being “scared” of the peace plan, because “the Palestinian people will actually like it because it will lead to new opportunities for them to have a much better life.”
While Kushner said that he and Greenblatt had no plans to meet with Abbas during their trip to the Middle East, “he knows that we are open to meeting him and continuing the discussion when he is ready.”
After questioning Abbas’s commitment to peace, Kushner noted that the Palestinian leadership had reacted to the U.S. peace efforts with “lot of sharp statements and condemnations, but no ideas or efforts with prospects of success.”
Kushner also rejected criticism from the PA that U.S. efforts to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza was an effort to divide Palestinians. “The last I checked they are divided, they are not connected by government or land and it’s needlessly become a dire humanitarian situation because the Palestinian leadership has made it a political situation,” Kushner said.
In his concluding remarks, Kushner told the Palestinians, “Show your leadership that you support efforts to achieve peace. Let them know your priorities and give them the courage to keep an open mind towards achieving them. Don’t let your leadership reject a plan they haven’t even seen. A lot has happened in the world since this conflict began decades ago. The world has moved forward while you have been left behind.”
[Photo: Wochit News / YouTube ]