White House adviser Jared Kushner touts Israel-UAE deal as path to Middle East progress
- Comments came at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of first commercial flight from Israel to the UAE
- On Saturday, the UAE formally ended its commercial boycott of Israel, although the two countries have quietly conducted business for years
White House adviser Jared Kushner on Sunday trumpeted the recent agreement by Israel and the United Arab Emirates to establish diplomatic relations as a historic breakthrough and said “the stage is set” for other Arab states to follow suit, but he gave no indication that any new deals were imminent.
Appearing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, Kushner spoke a day before he is to join a senior Israeli delegation on the first commercial flight from Israel to the UAE. The flight holds great symbolic value and is a key step in what is expected to be full normalisation between Israel and the UAE.
The August 13 announcement makes the UAE just the third Arab country to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, and the first to do so in over 25 years. It reflects a shifting Middle East in which shared concerns over Iran have overtaken traditional wall-to-wall Arab support for the Palestinians.
“Today obviously we celebrate a historic breakthrough for peace,” Kushner said, adding that the deal will create “previously unthinkable” economic, security and religious cooperation.
“While this peace agreement was thought by many to be impossible, the stage is now set for even more,” he said, claiming he has heard optimism throughout the region since the deal was announced.