WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump´s son-in-law Jared Kushner is heading to the Middle East, the White House said Tuesday, signalling a fresh push on a long promised but yet to be delivered peace plan for the region. Kushner is accompanied by Jason Greenblatt, Trump´s special representative for international negotiations, and Brian Hook, the special US representative for Iran, the White House said. They “will travel from May 27 to May 31 to Rabat, Amman, and Jerusalem,” said a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Trump administration is expected to unveil the long-awaited plan — after numerous failures by their predecessors — possibly as early as next month, but the Palestinians have already rejected it as heavily biased in favor of Israel. Washington has yet to commit to an exact timetable with respect to the political aspects of the plan. Kushner is the chief architect of the proposals and Greenblatt, a longtime Trump lawyer, has served as his right-hand man on the Middle East initiative. Kushner´s trip comes just days after Trump authorized $8.1 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies, bypassing Congress. Kushner has looked to an alliance with the Saudis against Iran as a way to gain Arab support for his Middle East peace plan. Congress had frozen arms sales to the kingdom after the assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in October and concerns over the human toll of a Saudi-led campaign in Yemen. But the administration defended the sales as necessary “to deter Iranian aggression and build partner self-defense capacity.”
Palestinian business heads say to boycott US-led peace conference: Leading Palestinian businessmen announced Tuesday they would boycott an economics-focused conference next month in Bahrain that is part of the United States´ Middle East peace plan.
The Palestinian political leadership had already announced it would not attend the June 25-26 conference, but the US had invited key Palestinian businesspeople, saying the meeting was focusing on economic issues only. In a joint press conference in the Palestinian city of Ramallah Tuesday, the bodies representing the vast majority of Palestinian businesses said they had jointly agreed to skip the conference. “Many Palestinian businessmen received invitations to attend the conference in Bahrain but we decided not to participate,” Arafat Asfour, chairman of the Palestine Trade Centre, told AFP.
“What is needed is a political solution because building an economy without sovereignty and control over land, water, sea and natural resources cannot succeed,” he added. “Any economic project without a political solution is selling an illusion.” The US has said the conference will focus on the economic part of its long-delayed peace plan, ahead of further proposals on the political front.
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