White House adviser Jared Kushner said on Wednesday the United States is willing to engage with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
At a workshop in Bahrain last week, Kushner unveiled a $50 billion economic plan for the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon.
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Sometime later this year, he is to outline a 50- to 60-page page plan that will offer proposals on resolving the thorny political issues between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Palestinians have harshly criticized the economic plan.
In a conference call with reporters, Kushner said US President Donald Trump was "very fond" of Abbas and willing to engage with him at the right time.
"Our door is always open to the Palestinian leadership," Kushner said.
He said he believes Abbas wants peace but "certain people around him are very uncomfortable with the way we've approached this, and their natural reaction is to attack and say crazy things" that are not constructive.
Asked by a Lebanese reporter whether the United States hoped Arab countries hosting Palestinian refugees would accept them permanently in exchange for funding, Kushner declined to answer directly, saying the matter would be addressed later.
But he suggested a comparison between Jews displaced from Middle Eastern countries in 1948, many of whom Israel took in.
"Look, you have a situation when this whole thing started where you had 800,000 Jewish refugees that came out of all the different Middle Eastern countries and you had 800,000, roughly, Palestinian refugees," he said
"And what's happened to the Israeli – to the Jewish – refugees, is they have been absorbed by different places whereas the Arab world has not absorbed a lot of these refugees over time," he said.
"I think that the people of Lebanon would love to see a resolution to this issue, one that is fair," he said.
"And I also think that the refugees, the Palestinian refugees who are in Lebanon, who are denied a lot of rights and who, you know, don't have the best conditions right now would also like to see a situation where there is a pathway for them to have more rights and to live a better life."
