Kushner peace plan urges huge 'Palestinian-Saudi-Jordanian land swap'

Kushner peace plan urges huge 'Palestinian-Saudi-Jordanian land swap'
Jared Kushner proposed Jordan giving land to the Palestinians in return for getting land from Saudi Arabia as part of his Middle East peace plan, according to a new book.
3 min read
20 March, 2019
Kushner had no diplomatic experience before being appointed to his current role. [Getty]

President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner proposed Jordan handing over land to the Palestinians in return for getting territories from Saudi Arabia as part of his peace plan for the Middle East, a new book has claimed.

Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption by investigative journalist Vicky Ward was released on Tuesday and features explosive details about Trump's foreign trips and the Donald Trump's so-called "deal of the century" Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.

The British-born author wrote that Saudi Arabia was central to Kushner's peace plan, both in helping to revive Gaza's economy and by relinquishing its own territory to aid diplomatic efforts.

"The plan also entailed land swaps, so that Jordan would give land to the Palestinian territories. In return, Jordan would get land from Saudi Arabia, and that country would get back two Red Sea islands it gave Egypt to administer in 1950," the book said, according to media reports.

Kushner also wanted Saudi Arabia and the UAE to provide economic assistance to Palestine, including plans to build an oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Gaza.

Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt have been handed the herculean task of coming up with a plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians after decades of failed initiatives.

Kushner, who had no diplomatic experience before being appointed to his current role has faced repeated criticism over the process, after repeatedly delaying unveiling of the proposal and keeping its main players in the dark.

The Palestinians have not been included in the process since severing diplomatic relations with the US administration, after Trump moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Greenblatt dismissed the allegations in the book, taking to Twitter to criticise what he called "misinformation".

"Whoever made these claims has bad info," he said. "A lot of people are sharing false info with the press now for bad reasons."

The book by British-born author Vicky Ward suggests Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump are fuelling chaos in the White House rather than mitigating it.

The book also asserts that Kushner's close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made him a useful go-between to Tel Aviv during Trump's election campaign.

Netanyahu and Trump eventually met in the Autumn of 2016, with Kushner and Steve Bannon both present.

"In that conversation, Trump let Kushner jump in, because US-Israel relations was the one political issue anyone in the campaign ever saw Kushner get worked up about," Ward alleges, according to The Jerusalem Post.

"On the Israel stuff, Jared at least comes across like he knows what he's talking about," the author quotes a source as saying.

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