Kushner pitches for normalisation of ties between Arab world, Israel

Normalisation of ties between the Arab world and Israel will happen sooner or later, Jared Kushner has said. Kushner, who is a senior adviser to US President Donald Trump, suggested that such a normalisation would lead to stability and great economic prosperity in the Middle East. He made the comments during a teleconference with media members yesterday as he was detailing the outcome of the ‘Peace to Prosperity Workshop’ that took place in the Kingdom last week.

“We believe that there will some point in the future, where there will be normalisation with Israel and and the rest of the Arab world and when that happens it will lead to a much more stable and safer Middle East. “There will be a lot more economic potential and opportunity for all people in the region,” he asserted. Kushner said that the discussions kick-started by the workshop remained healthy.

“At the workshop, we have tried to bring in different points of view, from the part of different people and we devised a different way of looking at the problem. We also had a different level of discussions.” “A lot of people, who have been involved in the process for a long time and failed, have criticised this workshop for not being held in a traditional way. But we should understand that the traditional approach has not worked,” Kushner pointed out.

He highlighted that the workshop was a big success. “We were overwhelmed by the response that we received. Every country that we invited showed up and we had a very big crowd. “Unlike previous conferences or summits, we got a lot of senior business leaders from all across the world. “What we saw at the event was a lot of interest from across the world to help the Palestinian people. And most of the speakers termed it a technically correct, credible and an ambitious plan.

“The plan is achievable, but can’t be implemented without a peace deal, without good governance as these two factors are prerequisites to attract investments. “There is a big desire from the part of the international community to try come in and help out to solve the crisis. “The plan now has been downloaded over a million times, which is well beyond our expectations which means that we’ve really got people looking at this and thinking about it.

“We’ve had very little technical criticism of the plan. I think everyone considers it a wellthought-out plan. It definitely draws on some work that’s been done in the past, but there’s also a lot of new ideas,” he added.