Qatar's 33-year-old emir, Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, told White House senior adviser Jared Kushner on Wednesday that his country would normalize diplomatic relations with Israel only after the implementation of the two-state solution with east Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.
During his conversation with Kushner, al-Thani reaffirmed his country's commitment to the 2002 Arab peace initiative, by which all Arab nations will normalize relations with Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from Judea and Samaria to pre-1967 borders and Palestinian independence.
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Kushner is in Qatar as part of a diplomatic effort to convince more Arab states to follow the United Arab Emirates and publicly announce official diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.
Kushner, who is also US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, was in Abu Dhabi on Monday with an Israeli-American delegation, then visited Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, hoping to convince other Arab countries to develop ties with Israel.
Those efforts, however, were reportedly rebuked, with both countries saying that the US will have to wait until Israel and the Palestinians agree on a two-state solution.
In a significant sign of progress, however, Riyadh announced Wednesday that it would start allowing flights between Israel and the UAE to travel through its airspace in a move that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed as a "tremendous" achievement.
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