Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, said on Wednesday that the administration believes that Israel should wait until after the March 2 election to apply Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.
“The hope is that they’ll wait till after the election, and we’ll work with them to try to come up with something,” Kushner told GZERO Media in an interview that will air in full on public television starting January 31.
“We’ve agreed with them on forming a technical team to start studying taking the conceptual map. The Jordan Valley can mean a lot of different things,” he continued. “I want to make sure that we have all of the parameters defined and that we have also a situation where we know what the freeze is.”
“We’ll start working on the technical stuff now, but I think we’d need an Israeli government in place in order to move forward,” said Kushner.
The White House adviser also had a message to the Palestinian Arabs who have rejected Trump’s plan outright.
“They played the victimhood card. Now they want a state. It’s all on the table. You’re not going to change people’s minds overnight, but for the first time we put out a pragmatic, rational plan…and basically what we’re saying to the Palestinians is ‘put up or shut up.’ If you want to actually make a difference, if you actually care about helping the people, you now have a golden opportunity to do that,” he said.