Jared Kushner: Israel took a giant step towards peace, Trump’s built a trust with the Israeli people
White House senior adviser Jared Kushner weighs in on the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan.
Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to President Trump, said the president “has built the trust of the Israeli people” and called the release of his Middle East peace plan “a giant step towards peace.”
Kushner, who is also Trump’s son-in-law and has worked on the peace plan for the past three years, added that the plan is an accomplishment that “only President Trump could have delivered on.”
He made the comments on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday, one day after Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed a Middle East peace plan meant to bring to an end the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
WHAT'S IN TRUMP'S MIDDLE EAST PEACE PLAN?
The plan, which has been opposed by the Palestinians, was touted by Trump as the “most detailed proposal ever put forward” toward a lasting peace in the region.
Long billed as the only way for the Palestinians and Israelis to actually come to terms, Trump’s plan calls for a two-state solution – with the creation of a future “state” of Palestine.
The plan would require the Palestinians to meet certain benchmarks -- rooting out terrorism, stopping "pay to slay," implementing steps toward free speech and political reforms – to become a state, but Trump promised that they would have U.S. backing if they did. It also calls for the creation of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem and for more than doubling the amount of territory the Palestinians control.
On Wednesday, Kushner referenced a map of Israel depicting the president’s vision for peace, which was tweeted by Trump. In the tweet, the president wrote, “This is what a future State of Palestine can look like, with a capital in parts of East Jerusalem.”
Kushner noted on Wednesday that “past proposals have been two to three pages.”
“This is an over 80-page proposal with a map, never done before, and getting Israel to agree to a Palestinian state and also agreeing to a map is an amazing first step that will make us be more closer [sic] to peace in the near future,” Kushner said.
During his appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Kushner also discussed the details of the plan.
“It’s a very technical proposal that gives the Palestinian people the ability to live a better life,” he said. “It takes the land, which is very complicated because this issue has been ignored for so many years and Israel has expanded more and more, which made it harder and harder for the Palestinians to have a place that they could have a state, it doubles the territory that they have the ability to have and it gives them a lot of economic incentives if they’re willing to change their governance structures.”
“You need to have freedom of press, you need to have respect for human rights, you need to have credible institutions that can run a state,” Kushner continued. “So this gives them a pathway to really achieve everything that they’ve always spoken about.”
Trump’s plan also calls for $50 billion in promised international investment, over the next 10 years, in a new Palestinian state.
“The Palestinian track record is perfect in not being able to make a deal, but his opportunity is available only because of President Trump’s leadership,” Kushner noted.
In a separate interview on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday, Netanyahu also spoke about the peace plan, noting Trump has “offered an enormous vision of economic growth.”
“Our Palestinian youngsters there are unemployed, they don’t have a future, he [Trump] comes in and he says, ‘We’ll bring you right into the 21st century, way into the 21st century with jobs, with technology, with investments, with cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians and the surrounding states,’” Netanyahu said on Wednesday.
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Netanyahu went on to say that Trump’s new and realistic vision is “based on practical steps for changing the Middle East, changing this conflict that has not been solved for 100 years.”
Fox News’ Andrew O’Reilly contributed to this report.
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