Kushner puts blame on Palestinians

Chief architect of US blueprint for peace in Middle East points finger at Abbas for tensions, violence.

UNITED NATIONS — The chief architect of the U.S. blueprint to resolve the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians on Thursday blamed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for soaring tensions and violence in the occupied West Bank since the plan’s release last week.

Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and adviser to President Donald Trump who spent nearly three years working on the plan, said leaders who are ready for a state “don’t call for days of rage and encourage their people to pursue violence if they’re not getting what they want.”

He said he thinks Abbas “was surprised with how good the plan was for the Palestinian people, but he locked himself into a position” by rejecting it before it came out. Abbas is putting forward old talking points when the situation has changed and “this may be the last chance to resolve the situation,” Kushner said.

He told a group of journalists after briefing the U.N. Security Council over lunch at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations that the U.S. proposal may be the last chance because the rate of expansion of Israeli settlements may preclude a contiguous Palestinian state.

Right now, Kushner said, “it’s very, very difficult to have a contiguous state where you can drive from the top to the bottom,” but it is still possible.

He said the most constructive thing the Palestinians can do is to sit down with the Israelis and go over the plan “line by line.”

“If they would like to meet, we’re happy to do it, but we’re not going to chase them,” Kushner said.

The U.S. plan, unveiled by President Donald Trump on Jan. 28, envisions a disjointed Palestinian state that turns over key parts of the West Bank to Israel, siding with Israel on key issues including borders and the status of Jerusalem and Jewish settlements.

The Palestinians seek all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war — for an independent state and the removal of many of the more than 700,000 Israeli settlers from these areas.

But under terms of the “peace vision” that Kushner oversaw, all

Israeli settlers would remain in place, and Israel would retain sovereignty over all of its settlements as well as the strategic Jordan Valley.

Palestinian supporters have circulated a draft U.N. resolution that would reject the U.S. plan, saying it violates international law and Security Council demands for a two-state solution based on borders before the 1967 Mideast war.

ANNA MONEYMAKER/THE NEW YORK TIMES Jared Kushner, a senior advisor to President Donald Trump, said the most constructive thing the Palestinians can do is to sit down with the Israelis and go over the plan “line by line.”