Jared Kushner said the Israeli ambassador could 'go fuck himself' if he disapproved of plans to normalize relations with Arab countries, book says
- Jared Kushner said Israel's ambassador to the US could "go fuck himself" over a normalization deal.
- Barak Ravid writes in his book about the US's deal with Israel to normalize relations with the UAE.
White House advisor Jared Kushner told his Middle East envoy that Israel's Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer could "go fuck himself" if he disagreed with a proposed deal involving then-Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's requests for normalization agreements with Arab nations, journalist Barak Ravid told the Forward in an interview.
Ravid's new book "Trump's Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East," details how things went off the rails after the rocky rollout of the two nations' "peace plan" for the Middle East.
The so-called "Deal of the Century" involved no discussions with Palestinian leaders, who promptly rejected it. The deal overwhelmingly favored Israel on a number of contentious issues and opened the door to more annexation of the West Bank.
But Netanyahu stunned Trump, according to Ravid, by indicating at the two leaders' January 2020 joint appearance unveiling the deal that the agreement gave him carte blanche to immediately move forward with aggressive annexation of the area.
Trump yelled "what the hell was that?" after Netanyahu departed, according to Ravid, with one former Trump official saying Netanyahu treated Trump "like a flowerpot" for his own political ends.
White House Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz bluntly informed Dermer that "the president doesn't like you guys now" when Dermer asked to meet with the president following the rollout. Ravid wrote.
Later, Dermer found himself on the receiving end of Kushner's wrath when he questioned the White House's trustworthiness, Ravid said, a blowup that resulted in the ambassador getting kicked out of the White House.
"Don't be mistaken to think that everything that happened in the past three years was for you. We did it because we were serious about peace," Kushner yelled at Dermer, according to Ravid's book. "To say such a thing about us is disgusting. Get out."
The United Arab Emirates then stepped in to propose a lifeline to help ease the impasse on both sides, offering to broker a deal that would normalize diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for a three-year delay in their West Bank annexation plans.
Netanyahu and Dermer wanted normalization agreements with three Arab nations in order for Israel go along with the plan — but Kushner was having none of it.
"Tell Ron that one country is all he's getting, and if he doesn't want it, let him go fuck himself," Kushner instructed Berkowitz to convey to Dermer, according to Ravid.
"The UAE had their own interest to move ahead with normalization with Israel to prevent a crisis in the region and preserve a two-state solution," Ravid told the Forward. "But they brought the ladder that allowed both the White House and Netanyahu to climb down from the tree."
Netanyahu tried to go back on the deal at the 11th hour, according to Ravid, but the wheels had already been set in motion for normalization.
Later, in addition to playing a key role in drawing up the Trump administration's "peace plan" for the Middle East, Kushner helped orchestrate the Abraham Accords.
Under the landmark accords, the UAE and Bahrain formalized diplomatic ties with Israel in September 2020. Two more Arab countries, Morocco and Sudan, joined the Abraham Accords not long after.
Kushner took a premature victory lap in a March 2021 op-ed, contending that he'd helped wind down the "last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict."
But devastating fighting between Israel and Hamas in May led Trump to question whether Kushner had accomplished "peace in the Middle East after all," per a June 2021 CNN report.