White House senior adviser Jared Kushner arrived in Jerusalem on Wednesday afternoon amid a six-country tour of the region as the administration tries to shore up support for its Middle East peace plan.
A US delegation led by Kushner and special Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt is touring the region to lobby support for the highly secretive US plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace, administration officials said.
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Kushner arrived in Israel after stops in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, according to a White House official.
In Amman, Kushner met with King Abdullah and discussed "efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," according to a statement released by the Jordanian royal court on Wednesday.
Abdullah stressed "the need to achieve a just and lasting peace to ensure the establishment of an independent Palestinian state ... with east Jerusalem as its capital, living in peace and security alongside Israel," the court said.
He also said any deal would need to be based on the internationally backed two-state solution and in accordance with the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative which calls for Israel to withdraw from all land occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War in exchange for normalization between Arab states and Israel.
Also Wednesday, meanwhile, the White House denied Israeli media reports that the Trump administration was planning to unveil its Mideast peace proposal during a conference with Arab leaders at Camp David.
"No summit has currently been planned," White House officials told i24NEWS, denying the reports.
"The Middle East team will report back to [Trump], [Vice President Mike Pence], the Secretary of State [Mike Pompeo], and NSA [National Security Adviser John Bolton] upon returning to discuss the many potential next steps to expand upon the success of the Bahrain workshop," the official added, referring to the administration's summit unveiling the economic aspects of the controversial plan rejected by Palestinians.
According to the now-discredit report, if the conference were to take place, Trump will likely voice support for a Palestinian political entity to be established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but not necessarily a state, and refer to an Arab presence in east Jerusalem, but not about it serving as a future Palestinian capital.
Palestinians are expected to reject the White House's proposal outright and have been lobbying Arab leaders to resist the White House's efforts in brokering a peace agreement.
This article was originally published by i24NEWS.
