JERUSALEM (JTA) — Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, architects of the Trump administration’s peace plan, arrived in Israel to discuss the proposal an hour before the government voted to dissolve and move to new elections.
Kushner, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser, and Greenblatt, his Middle East envoy, are scheduled to meet Thursday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
They were in Morocco on Tuesday and Jordan on Wednesday in an effort to convince the two countries to participate in the U.S. economic summit scheduled for June 25-26 in Bahrain. The meeting is being called an “economic workshop” to encourage capital investment in the West Bank, Gaza and countries in the region, and reportedly is the first step in the peace plan, which is scheduled to be rolled out in the coming months.
The Palestinians have announced that they will not attend the meeting, and have called on Arab countries to boycott. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have said they will send representatives to the conference in Manama, the Bahrain capital.
Following their meeting on Wednesday, Jordan’s King Abdullah in a statement “stressed the need to step up all efforts to achieve comprehensive and lasting peace on the basis of the two-state solution, guaranteeing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state” on the June 4, 1967, lines and with eastern Jerusalem as its capital, “living side by side with Israel in peace and security, in accordance with international law and relevant UN resolutions.”
An unnamed U.S. State Department official told the Israeli daily Haaretz that the Bahrain conference will take place regardless of Israel’s new elections.
