The 'Deal of the Century' Designed by Jared Kushner and His White House Team

Kushner wrote in some passages of his memoir: From Israel, we traveled to Montreux, on the shore of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, to attend one of the most secret gatherings in the world: the Bilderberg meeting, an annual gathering of senior leaders in government, industry, and academia. The meeting was founded in 1954 to strengthen relations between the United States and Europe.

Kushner added: I thought the 2019 meeting could be a useful place to explain our approach to peace in the Middle East, and to build support among an influential segment of people.

On 22 June 2019, we launched the Peace to Prosperity plan, which is the most comprehensive economic framework ever created for the Palestinians and the greater Middle East. Forty-two pages of the 140-page plan set out a detailed strategy to deal with more than seventy years of economic distress and political abuses in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Kushner attributed the causes of this economic distress among the Palestinians in his memoir by saying: Billions of dollars flowed in foreign investments to the areas through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), but this money did almost nothing to improve the lives of Palestinians. When their corrupt leaders were not stealing the money, they were wasting it on dead-end, low-impact projects (according to Kushner's statements).

Kushner continues in his memoir: As for international investments in Gaza, they were used to pay for programs that taught youth an ideology of hatred of Israel and the United States. Funds also built secret storage facilities to hide Hamas’s military equipment, which Israeli forces would attempt to destroy during skirmishes (according to the content of Kushner’s memoir).

Kushner added: These fundamental flaws prevented business leaders from investing in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip and deprived the Palestinian people of a better future!

Kushner continues to describe his plan (the Deal of the Century) saying: Our plan proposed a $50 billion investment in the Palestinian lands and the surrounding region, to be released in tranches over a ten-year period with strict accountability measures. It identified a framework to improve access to Palestinian lands, which included building new roads and rail lines, demilitarizing and modernizing border crossings, and linking the West Bank and Gaza!

The plan also called for improving critical infrastructure, such as water treatment facilities, power plants, and communication networks. Palestinian schools were not providing workers with the skills they needed to fill vacancies in the local labor market, so our plan called for job training, curriculum changes, and the establishment of an entirely new global university. We also introduced strong reforms to establish the rule of law and prevent corruption! (according to Kushner's statements).

While proposals to resolve the political conflict between Israel and the Palestinians often seemed limited to a certain category, the plan to improve the lives of the Palestinian people was more realistic. The plan detailed 179 specific projects… Yet none of these investments would matter unless they were part of a political peace agreement..!

The second part of our plan, which we hoped to release once Israel formed its government, was that a thriving Palestinian economy depended on regional peace, and without it we could not ask Israelis to ease their security protocols at the borders and allow the free flow of goods and people from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where Israel’s vibrant economy represented a huge economic opportunity for Palestinians if leaders could resolve their longstanding political disputes. It was like having Silicon Valley separated from the rest of California!

On marketing the Deal of the Century, Kushner invited on 25 June to a global workshop to explain the plan’s overall framework, saying: I arrived in Bahrain to attend the long-awaited “Peace to Prosperity” workshop. The purpose of the workshop was to build momentum for our economic plan by engaging world leaders and business titans who have the ability to invest in the projects our plan recommended. I wanted to make clear that our scheme could become a reality quickly once a political peace agreement was reached!

Kushner adds: The workshop attracted a wonderful group of attendees who affirmed the seriousness and feasibility of our plan. Among the hundreds of participants were Bahraini Crown Prince Sheikh Salman, Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group, Emirati businessman Mohamed Alabbar, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, World Bank President David Malpass, Randall Stevenson of AT&T, Masayoshi [Son] of SoftBank, and FIFA President Gianni Infantino. In total, more than 25 countries were represented, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Morocco, and Russia. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin led the U.S. delegation.

The Bahrainis agreed to waive traditional visa restrictions and allow Israeli businessmen and a small number of members of the Israeli media to participate — a significant development given that Israel and Bahrain had no formal relations. With every small gesture like this, we were giving Arab leaders another chance to test the case for normalization!

Kushner notes in his memoir about the workshop, acknowledging that a few Palestinian businessmen were present, but Mohamed Alabbar, CEO of Emaar, the region’s largest development company, fully absorbed the evolved perspective of Arab leaders toward Palestinian resistance: “Each of us, we are Palestinian at heart. Because the Palestinian cause is our cause. So, unfortunately, they were not here. It was great to have them. He said during a panel discussion: “But I feel I represent them.””

Kushner continues about the Bahrain workshop saying: Ultimately, Abbas’s stubbornness could prove counterproductive. To attendees, his refusal to participate and his barring of other Palestinians from attending seemed like futile decisions. The conference dominated Middle Eastern airwaves for three days. When reporters asked President Abbas his view of the workshop, he described the plan as a "big lie invented by Kushner and others to fool people."

Kushner concludes from the joint Arab-Israeli attendance at the Bahrain workshop, saying: Two years earlier, it would not have been conceivable for those Arab ministers to attend a public conference with Israelis that Palestinians openly attacked. The figurative wall between Arabs and Israelis began to crumble before our eyes. Through the workshop, Bahrain took a brave step toward normalization, exceeding praise for the vehement reaction. Gulf leaders began to think about what the larger step could look like — not just for Bahrain, but for their countries!

● To be continued