Claim: Kushner Israeli-Palestinian Peace Plan Included Land Swaps Between Jordan, Saudi Arabia

A new book claims the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan originally called for the formation of a Palestinian state on lands controlled by Jordan, which would be compensated with territory currently under the sovereignty of Saudi Arabia. In turn, Riyadh would regain control over two Red Sea islands administered by Egypt since 1950. It is unclear whether the Palestinian state would include portions of the West Bank or if the land-swap proposal is a central component of a current peace plan, which the White House says it will soon unveil. According to author Vicky Ward, senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner, who has spearheaded the U.S. administration’s peace push, also sought the construction of an oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia to the Gaza Strip, where refineries, a shipping terminal and a desalination plant would be built to help alleviate the high unemployment rate in the blockaded enclave. The book, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, contains a chapter on the peace process but focuses primarily on the alleged negative influence that President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law have had on his administration. It also recounts how the American leader and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu developed a close personal and working relationship, beginning with a meeting in 2016 during the U.S. presidential campaign. In a tweet late Tuesday, American peace negotiator Jason Greenblatt dismissed Ward’s claims as “bad info” and “misinformation.”