The US President Donald Trump’s senior Middle East adviser son-in-law Jared Kushner said Thursday that the Trump administration would unveil its much-awaited Mideast “Deal of the Century” after Israeli elections on April 9.
According to the Washington Post the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Kushner briefed participants at a security conference in Poland about the anticipated plan but would not go into details for fear of it leaking. Netanyahu told reporters that he looked forward to “seeing the plan once it is presented.”
Netanyahu said he heard nothing new from Kushner besides a reference to a 2002 Saudi Peace Initiative which offered full Arab recognition of Israel in return for a withdrawal from territories it captured in the 1967 war.
Netanyahu wouldn’t comment on any concessions Israel would have to make under any U.S.-backed proposal.
A diplomat who watched Kushner’s presentation quoted him as saying that Trump had given him the Israeli-Palestinian “file” to give the long-elusive goal of a peace agreement “a shot.” Despite the long odds he said he believed “privately people are much more flexible” than their public positions the diplomat said speaking on condition of anonymity according to protocol.
The Palestinians have rejected the plan accusing the Trump White House of being unfairly biased in favor of Israel. The apparent rejection of the Saudi peace plan is likely to deepen their belief that the plan will fall far short of their longstanding goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state in the Israeli-occupied West Bank occupied Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
“There will be no peace and stability in the Middle East without a peaceful solution that leads to a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as a capital” said Nabil Abu Rdeneh a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority.
The Palestinians skipped Thursday’s conference and asked Arab countries to boycott or downgrade their representation. Some 60 countries took part in the gathering including five Arab foreign ministers that made a rare public appearance alongside Netanyahu.
Kushner has been working on an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan for close to two years but has yet to release any details and the release of his plan has been repeatedly delayed.
U.S. officials had said Kushner would make some comments in Warsaw about the conflict. But Netanyahu said ahead of time he didn’t expect any discussion of the peace plan with the focus of the conference on participants’ shared concern over Iran and its growing influence in the region.
The diplomat quoted Netanyahu joking at some point to Kushner that “having this file” is a “tough one.”
“But if you are crazy enough and I think you might just be you can come up with new ideas” he quoted Netanyahu as saying.
The U.S. recognition of contested Jerusalem as Israel’s capital along with the cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid to the Palestinians have prompted the Palestinians to cut off ties with the White House and pre-emptively reject the peace plan.
With the Palestinians sidelined Netanyahu has tried to use the Warsaw conference to get closer to other Arab nations aligned with it against Iran.
Netanyahu has long boasted of clandestinely developing good relations with several Arab states despite a lack of official ties. Bringing such contacts out into the open would mark a major diplomatic coup and put a seal of approval on his goal of improving Israel’s standing in the world and particularly with Arabs.
On Wednesday Netanyahu met with Oman’s foreign minister Yusuf bin Alawi and they issued a joint video statement. At Thursday’s opening session he was seated next to the foreign minister of Yemen Khaled al-Yamani as representatives of Saudi Arabia Kuwait Qatar and others looked on.
