BICOM

Jared Kushner said yesterday that the US plan for Israel-Palestinian talks will entail “tough compromises” for both sides and be “different” from previous plans.

Kushner said the Trump administration’s “focus is really on the bottom up, which is how do you make the lives of the Palestinian people better, what can you resolve to allow these areas to become more investable,” adding that the plan “is something that allows for Israel to maintain security, but there will be tough compromises for both”.

Kushner added: “We’ve taken, I think, an unconventional approach. We’ve studied all the different past efforts, and how they failed and why they failed. There’s been some tremendous work done by the people who’ve worked on this before us. Normally they start with a process and then hope that the process leads to a resolution for something to happen. What we’ve done is the opposite … we started with a solution and then we’ll work on a process to try to get there.”

When asked if the plan would focus on the two-state idea, Kushner said that: “If people focus on the old traditional talking points we will never make progress. What we will put out is different. We deal with all the core status issues because you have to do it, but we’ve also built a robust business plan for the whole region.”

Kushner described the Arab League’s 2002 peace initiative as a “very good attempt” at resolving the conflict, but went on to point out: “If that would’ve worked, we would’ve made peace a long time ago on that basis.”

Kushner also said he had prepared to unveil the plan at the end of 2018, but it was decided to delay its publication because of the recent elections in Israel. “Prime Minister Netanyahu had a great victory, and he’s in the middle of forming his coalition, and once that’s done we’ll probably be in the middle of Ramadan, so we’ll wait until after Ramadan and then we’ll put our plan out,” Kushner said.