The international mainstream media painted last week’s meeting between Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and US President Donald Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as “productive.”
Apparently, that description wasn’t entirely accurate.
The London-based Arabic-language daily al-Hayat instead called the meeting “tense,” and said it ended with a serious rift between the Americans and the Palestinians.
According to Palestinian officials who spoke to the newspaper, Trump is now considering pulling out of the Mideast peace process altogether.
The Jerusalem Post quoted an American administration official as saying that was “nonsense,” though he did not refute other details of the al-Hayat report.
Abbas is said to have been outraged when Kushner entered the room and conveyed Israel’s demand that he stop using international financial aid to pay salaries to terrorists sitting in Israeli jails.
Kushner also reportedly insisted that Palestinian officials halt all incitement against Israel, and expressed disappointment that Abbas had failed to condemn last week’s deadly terrorist stabbing in Jerusalem, which took the life of a young female Border Police officer.
Al-Hayat wrote that Abbas fired back by accusing Kushner of “taking Israel’s side,” and was adamant that paying salaries to convicted terrorists was part of his “social responsibility.”
Originally posted at Israel Today Magazine.
