Jared Kushner

“After exchanging niceties, I started the meeting right where Abbas and Trump had left off during their May visit, and asked Abbas whether he had made progress on the details of an initial proposal. He said they were willing to take steps that they hadn’t made with anyone else—they would be incredibly flexible on the land. But they needed to know exactly what percentage of the disputed territory they would get, and they wanted us to get Israel to propose a detailed map. If we could get them a map, they would be flexible, and everything else would be easy, Abbas pledged. I asked him if they had an initial offer on the land issue, but as I tried to drill down, Abbas wasn’t willing to talk specifics. He delivered the same set of diplomatic platitudes he’d conveyed to Trump several weeks earlier. Our conversation circled back around to my request for him to share concrete details about a land proposal he could accept. Again, he refused. I started to see why people were so skeptical of our efforts: Abbas was a savvy diplomat who was unfailingly polite and expressed a desire to make progress, but he appeared unwilling to let our negotiation reach a starting point. He said repeatedly that he had a lot of new ideas and would be flexible, but he then just rehashed the same general demands the Palestinians had requested for decades. “I’m going to go back to the president, who’s not a very patient person,” I said. “He’s going to ask me where we are on the deal, and I’m going to tell him that the Israelis are engaged and constructive, but you guys came back and weren’t willing to be flexible at all. Is that the message you want me to relay?” Abbas insisted that he wanted to be flexible, but then it was more of the same. I wasn’t sure whether he didn’t know how to make a deal, or if he just didn’t want to. Sensing my exasperation, Abbas made what I perceived to be a factitious offer: he seemed to imply that if I didn’t like the way things were going, then he would simply give back the keys to the West Bank and let the US run things. “Sure, I’ll take the keys,” I retorted. I sensed Greenblatt shifting uncomfortably in his chair, like he was trying to tell me, telepathically, You can’t say that.”
― Jared Kushner, Breaking History: A White House Memoir

“No one had ever come close to a real solution that could be signed and implemented. Those who had gone before had made sincere efforts, but they were more focused on managing the political reaction to their negotiations than they were on producing detailed proposals that would have a practical impact. I decided to test a new approach: I wouldn’t try to dodge the details. Instead, I would embrace them. I asked my team to make a comprehensive “issues list” that explained the major points of contention between the two sides. This would help me understand the granular differences between the two parties. I would then work through this issues list with leaders in the Middle East to hear their perspectives and find concrete resolutions. This was how we approached transactions in business, and it made sense to apply the same technique here.”
― Jared Kushner, Breaking History: A White House Memoir