01 Sep Underestimating Jared Kushner

I have to admit it. I completely underestimated Jared Kushner. I thought that Jared Kushner was nothing other than a son-in-law who happened to get lucky and marry the President of the United States’s favorite daughter. I thought hiring him was the very worst idea. Setting aside his lack of experience and anything in his past that required the skill set to conduct international diplomacy, a good rule of thumb is never hire someone you can’t fire.

How could President Trump get out of a situation where Jared would be a failure at his job and President Trump not be able to either fire him or sideline him? When it was announced that Mr. Kushner would be heading up “The Deal of the Century” between the Israelis and the Palestinians I gave up on any hope of progress. Any excitement that I had with the naming of Ambassador Friedman as America’s ambassador to Israel went away when I realized he would be overseen by Jared Kushner. I thought at best we would have a situation where nothing would happen over the next four years and at worst, things would be made much more challenging here. There was nothing in Mr. Kushner‘s resume or anything written about him that gave me confidence that he would do his job in a satisfactory manner.

Over the last 3 1/2 years, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said, Mr. Kushner has been mocked and called a failure. Any honest examination of his record while serving as senior advisor to President Trump will conclude that he has been successful.

Early in the administration he decided to take a completely different approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than had ever been taken before. He did two things differently in conducting foreign policy.

First he did not see the Middle East as Palestinian centric. He realized that many of the Sunni Arab countries did not put Palestinians at the top of their priority list. Using the shared American-Israeli-Sunni Arab concern over Iran, Mr. Kushner pushed ahead for normalizing relations between Arab countries that therefore had refused to recognize Israel’s existence. The second novel approach that Mr. Kushner took to foreign policy was recognizing the leading role economics can play in diplomacy. Former diplomats had always placed ideology as the motivating factor behind any diplomatic efforts. Mr. Kushner realized that improving the economic situation of Sunni Arabs could motivate greater diplomacy between Israel and America and the Sunni Arab countries. There was one other innovation I consider the most important innovation that Mr. Kushner and his team brought to the US Israel relationship and to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Kushner would only deal with the reality as it appeared on the ground, not what peacemakers had dreamed it should be. By recognizing that 30% of Judea and Samaria was already and forever would be, under Israeli control Mr. Kushner was able to push far ahead and gain the confidence of Israel leadership. I was wrong about Mr. Kushner and his abilities. Although many partisan hacks will read this and be triggered by an inability to admit the truth, I am convinced that history will record Mr. Kushner as one of America’s greatest diplomats and peacemakers.