Jared Kushner’s Bahrain Conference Is the Sideshow
The big powers, Russia and the U.S., talked spheres of influence in Jerusalem, with Benjamin Netanyahu as the broker.
The new Mideast order.
Photographer: MENAHEM KAHANA/AFPDonald Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner has been in Bahrain, rolling out the economic part of Trump’s Deal of the Century peace plan for solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That conference is an exercise in orchestrated futility; the more important event is an unprecedented trilateral conference being held in Jerusalem.
The Palestinians are boycotting Kushner’s exercise, having made it plain that they will refuse any American offer of financial aid without agreement for a Palestinian state. The Trump administration has no intention of doing that. Indeed, the Bahrain conference was designed to elicit a Palestinian rejection, at which point the U.S. can give Israel the go-ahead for its plans to annex parts of the West Bank and permanently thwart Palestinian statehood.