Top U.S. peace envoy caught on hot mic expressing doubt about the viability of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
Candid statements by U.S. Middle East envoy Jared Kushner were meant to remain private, but, as has regularly occurred during the Trump administration, they were instead leaked to the media, providing a rare—some might even say grim—behind-the-scenes look into the moribund peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
“Not a whole lot has been accomplished over the last 40 or 50 years…and there may be no solution,” Kushner told congressional interns, in a supposed off-the-record conversation that was recorded and subsequently shared with WIRED magazine. The son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump and senior adviser tasked with leading peace negotiations, Kushner described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as “very emotionally charged…very, very combustible, and very, very delicate.” Nevertheless, he concluded, “it’s one of the problem sets that the president asked us to focus on…and try to come to the right conclusion [about] in the near future.”
The question, then, is whether this eventual determination will conform with or deviate from Washington’s decades-long commitment to the so-called two-state solution, which entails the formation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in east Jerusalem, in exchange for an end-of-claims peace agreement with Israel.
Speaking to The Media Line, former Israeli ambassador to the United States (1990–1993, 1998–2000) Zalman Shoval believes that Kushner’s statements could represent a certain “awakening,” a sense of reality that while “there may be a chance of finding a solution in the long run, the basic ingredients for a final, permanent peace treaty are simply not there right now.” He further contended that such an understanding was likely “to be arrived at sooner or later, and that if Trump is a realistic person, he will come to understand that if you can’t get what you want, than try something else.”
In this respect, Amb. Shoval believes there may yet be an opportunity to make some progress, but that would first require abandoning the goal of an all-encompassing deal. “By overreaching and pushing for a final agreement,” he explained to The Media Line, “people have disregarded what can be achieved, including working to enhance the Palestinian economy and security cooperation; which, in turn, could gradually lead Israel to reduce some of its functions in the West Bank.”
In other words, lower the bar and pursue more practical, interim measures, an approach advocated by former Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan. During the Israel-Egypt talks at Camp David in 1978, in which the parameters for Palestinian self-autonomy were broadly set, the legendary general articulated his famous axiom: “There is no text for a peace treaty that Israel will accept that the Palestinians won’t reject, and vice versa.” Amb. Shoval invoked the adage to contextualize decades of unsuccessful efforts by a multitude of committed actors—all backed by the world’s lone superpower—to bridge the gap between Israel and the Palestinians on the so-called “core” issues; including the fate of Palestinian refugees, the recognition of Israel as the Jewish nation-state, dividing Jerusalem and the delineation of secure borders, among others.
Perhaps for this reason Trump was initially reticent to jump headfirst into the quagmire of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, but, like his predecessors, he has since been pulled into the vortex by the allure of achieving “the ultimate deal.” Assigning Kushner to his role alongside trusted confidant Jason Greenblatt—”The Special Envoy for International Negotiations”—made clear that Trump was serious about the effort. To this end, both Kushner and Greenblatt have made multiple trips to Israel and the West Bank to meet, respectively, with both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Mahmoud Abbas.
From the get-go, however, obstacles presented themselves, with Trump himself during a visit this past March having reportedly sparred with Abbas over his insistence on continuing payments to Palestinian prisoners convicted of security offenses in Israel (which, when including stipends to ex-prisoners and their families, now totals some $350 million annually, or roughly half the total amount of foreign contributions the Palestinian Authority receives each year). More recently, Trump drew the ire of Palestinian officialdom when he broke with traditional protocol by adding to his negotiating team U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who was subsequently banned from Ramallah due his past support for the settlement enterprise. Coupled with the perception that the White House has applied minimal pressure on the Israeli government to curb the expansion of Jewish communities in the West Bank, the Palestinian side has purportedly become disillusioned with the White House, resulting in yet another apparent impasse, a reality exacerbated by the latest crisis involving the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Mosque.
It is within this experiential framework that Kushner made his hot mic comments, which could therefore merely reflect frustration with a stalemated process as opposed to a crystallizing, if not already-formulated position of the Trump administration.
In fact, according to Ambassador Alan Baker, Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a former participant in the drafting of the Oslo Accords, Trump’s policy will likely remain fluid for the foreseeable future. “So far [Trump’s] efforts have not been particularly effective,” Amb. Baker tells The Media Line, “as there has been no progress in terms of getting back to a negotiating process.”
“From the beginning the U.S. tried to develop the conditions for talks with Abbas,” he expounded, “but it became evident very quickly that it was not working. Trump even postponed the proposal to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. He has to think again how to set up the conditions that would bring about the type of deal that he wants to make.”
In this respect, Amb. Baker, also a former deputy director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and top envoy to Canada, highlights the ever-changing circumstances in the Middle East and the need to adapt. “The Muslim world has changed, the area around Israel has changed—a totally different set of conditions exists today and there is a need to rethink tactics and perhaps reconsider the aim and target.”
With a bull’s eye likely out of the equation, even baby steps towards bringing Israel and the Palestinians together—so-called confidence-building measures—are liable to be trumpeted as an accomplishment by the White House.