US ambassador to Israel David Friedman went rogue when he informed then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Trump administration would again plans to annex giant components of the West Bank, ex-White House senior adviser Jared Kushner maintains in a new guide slated to be revealed later this month.
Kushner’s account, the most recent tell-all from a former Trump administration official to provide a peek into the White House’s considerably chaotic rollout of its 2020 peace plan, seems to contradict Friedman, who insisted when he revealed his personal memoir earlier this 12 months that he was in lock-step with Kushner on the problem of annexation, which he personally supported.
“The accusation that I was running my own agenda with Netanyahu about [applying Israeli] sovereignty [to parts of the West Bank] and not letting the president know, not letting anybody know, contrary to the wishes of Jared — it’s 100% false, 100% false,” Friedman told The Times of Israel in February.
But Kushner tells a unique story in “Breaking History: A White House Memoir,” set to be revealed on August 23.
In it, Kushner recollects being enraged as Netanyahu used his speech on the January 2020 White House unveiling of the Trump peace plan to announce that the president had develop into the primary world chief to acknowledge Israel’s sovereignty over a lot of the West Bank and that in consequence Israel could be shifting to annex all of the West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley.
For a minimum of the subsequent 4 years, Israel will preserve the established order “in areas that your plan does not designate as being part of Israel in the future,” Netanyahu informed the US president. “Israel will preserve the possibility for peace.” Then the prime minister added: “At the same time Israel will apply its laws to the Jordan Valley, to all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and to other areas that your plan designates as part of Israel and which the United States has agreed to recognize as part of Israel.”
“This was not what we had negotiated,” writes Kushner.
“Under our plan, we would eventually recognize Israel’s sovereignty over agreed upon areas if Israel took steps to advance Palestinian statehood within the territory we outlined,” he elaborates, insisting that US approval of Israeli annexation would take time and was not a foregone conclusion.
Then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with then-US president Donald Trump throughout an occasion with within the East Room of the White House in Washington on January 28, 2020. (AP/Susan Walsh)
“I grabbed my chair so intensely that my knuckles turned white, as if my grip could make Bibi stop. I had explicitly asked Israeli ambassador [to the US] Ron Dermer to make sure Bibi kept his remarks brief and above the politics of the day,” Kushner continues. “In both tone and substance, the speech was way off the mark. It contained nothing magnanimous or conciliatory toward the Palestinians. It was essentially a campaign speech for his domestic political audience, and it misrepresented our plan.”
As Netanyahu’s speech sails previous the 20-minute-mark within the account, Kushner writes of his concern that the annexation pledge would destroy his effort to garner backing for the peace plan from Arab international locations, three of whom had despatched ambassadors to the disclosing ceremony.
Breaking with previous US administrations, the Trump plan envisioned the creation of a semi-contiguous Palestinian state in about 70% of the West Bank, a handful of neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, most of Gaza and a few areas of southern Israel — if the Palestinians acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state, disarm Hamas and different terror teams within the coastal enclave, and fulfill different situations.
The plan additionally allowed Israel to ultimately annex each considered one of its settlements, grants the Jewish state sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and overriding safety management west of the Jordan River; and bars Palestinian refugees from settling in Israel.
“I had walked them through the peace proposal and given them my word that [then-US president Donald] Trump would present a dignified and balanced proposal— one that required compromises on both sides. But that certainly wasn’t the deal Bibi was describing,” Kushner writes.
“Had the rollout gone according to plan, it would have put [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas in an impossible position. Reacting harshly against a credible proposal would further alienate him while exposing the hollowness of his position. But the Israeli prime minister had given Abbas exactly the kind of opening he needed to reject our plan.”
As he and the president walked again to the Oval Office after the ceremony, a visibly dissatisfied Trump informed him, “Bibi gave a campaign speech. I feel dirty,” in accordance to Kushner’s memoir.
An in depth-up of the Trump administration’s ‘Vision for Peace Conceptual Map,’ revealed on January 28, 2020.
“As it turned out, Ambassador David Friedman had assured Bibi that he would get the White House to support annexation more immediately. He had not conveyed this to me or anyone on my team,” Kushner writes.
Friedman went additional after the ceremony, telling reporters that Israel “does not have to wait at all” on annexation and that the one limiting issue was “the time it takes for them to obtain internal approvals.”
Kushner writes that he then confronted Friedman, who insisted that he had precisely represented the Trump proposal. “Our conversation got heated, and I pulled out the plan from the folder on my desk.”
“’Where does it say that in here?’ I asked. ‘It doesn’t say that in here. You’re one of the best lawyers in the world. You know that’s not what we agreed to.’”
Kushner writes that Friedman responded by suggesting that he and Kushner “stay ambiguous and let Bibi say what he wants,” so they may see the way it performs out.
Kushner was unimpressed, responding that Friedman was ignoring the broader implications of Netanyahu’s claims.
“’You haven’t spoken to a single person from a country outside of Israel,’ I shot back. ‘You don’t have to deal with the Brits, you don’t have to deal with the Moroccans, and you don’t have to deal with the Saudis or the Emiratis, who are all trusting my word and putting out statements. I have to deal with the fallout of this. You don’t,’” he writes.
Then-US president Donald Trump reaches to shake Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s hand earlier than a gathering on the Palace Hotel throughout the 72nd United Nations General Assembly on September 20, 2017, in New York. (AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski)
Friedman started to acknowledge the harm Netanyahu’s speech had precipitated and indicated readiness to again down, Kushner writes, including that he ordered the envoy to go meet with the Israeli premier and inform him that the US wouldn’t again his plan for instant West Bank annexation.
“Tell him…that if we’re lucky, this hasn’t completely killed my credibility with other countries, and I will still be able to get the statements of support I have teed up,” Kushner says he informed Friedman.
“To his credit, Friedman cleaned up the misunderstanding with the Israelis and the media.”
Friedman informed The Times of Israel on Sunday, “Jared and I have different recollections of those hectic days. But we agree that we reconciled our differences in a manner that best served the US-Israel relationship. I stand by my recollection of the events as set forth in my memoir, ‘Sledgehammer.’”
The former ambassador additionally pointed to Trump’s personal remarks on the unveiling ceremony wherein he mentioned that the US would “form a joint committee with Israel to convert the [peace plan’s] conceptual map into a more detailed and calibrated rendering so that recognition [of Israeli sovereignty] can be immediately achieved.”
The fallout from the disclosing ceremony led to a deterioration within the administration’s ties with the Netanyahu authorities, with Israel’s ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer later storming into Kushner’s workplace to voice his frustration, Kushner writes.
Then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2nd from proper) meets at his Jerusalem workplace with the ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer (proper); White House adviser Jared Kushner (heart); US ambassador David Friedman (second left); and particular envoy Jason Greenblatt, on July 31, 2019. (Kobi Gideon/GPO)
Kushner didn’t take effectively to Dermer’s conduct and replied, “’Don’t take us for granted… We worked our asses off for three years to get to this point. For the first time, Israel has the moral high ground…. But now it’s all screwed up. You guys think you have been so effective with this administration. I hate to break the reality to you, but we didn’t do any of these things because you convinced us to. We did them because we believe they were the right things to do.’”
“Dermer saw that he had gone too far. He apologized and left soon after, knowing that it was up to them to clean up the political mess that Bibi had created,” Kushner writes.
Netanyahu ultimately agreed to droop his annexation plans later that 12 months in change for normalizing relations with the UAE — an settlement brokered by Kushner and the Trump administration.
Netanyahu’s workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the claims in Kushner’s guide.
