Listen to Ambassador Ron Dermer refute the claims in Jared Kushner’s upcoming book
The discussion on Kushner’s book starts at 42 minutes and lasts for 18 minutes.
T. Belman. Great discussion. I question his statement that the 4 years hiatus was a minimum. I thought it was a fixed date.
😀 It’s the battle of the autobiographies; 3 to 1 Bibi v Kushner
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/politics/bibi-to-tell-us-his-story-in-upcoming-autobiography/2022/08/16/
Very interesting interview. The controversy raised in Kushner’s book related to Bibi is carefully discussed by Dermer in the second half of the interview. Dermer states that Bibi was clearly in support of both the embassy move and the extension of sovereignty over the 30% of the territories.
Dermer explains the context for the phone call that Kushner describes between Bibi and Trump as he(Dermer) was also on that phone call. Bibi had assured the Trump administration that there would be no violence resulting from the embassy move, and Bibi personally stated that he would take responsibility for any violence that might result from the embassy move, indicating that he clearly supported Trump’s decision to move forward with the plan. Prior to this, Dermer relates that the US military/intel establishment tried to undermine Trump’s decision to move the embassy by drafting Israel’s intelligence services to support them against Trump. Upon being warned of this by Dermer, Bibi sent his National Security Advisor to the Israeli intelligence agencies to instruct them to not give any mixed signals about the potential for violence – there was no indication that violence would result from the embassy move and that there should be no equivocation on this point when the Americans made their inquiries.
Furthermore, Dermer explains that extending sovereignty was not part of the Trump Peace Plan. It was totally separate, and was covered in a letter from Trump to Bibi and a counter letter sent from Bibi to Trump. Dermer explains that Israel has every right to extend sovereignty without the support of the US, but would have to face the UNSC for doing so. What made things different following the letters being exchanged, was that Trump declared his support for Israel to extend sovereignty immediately within the 30% of the territory as had been discussed. In exchange, Israel would have had to embrace the Trump plan, leave territory designated for a Palestinian state and not touch it for the next 4 years, and comport Israel’s building policy to only build in those territories that had been designated as Israeli sovereign territory (the 30%). He notes that this was the reason that Bibi went to Washington, but that it appeared as if there was some disconnect within the Trump administration as to what had been agreed to within the exchanged letters. Dermer goes on to state that Friedman’s depiction of events in his book is precisely how the situation developed.
Additionally, Dermer asserts that if Israel had applied sovereignty to the territories that Trump outlined as being part of Israel in Jan 2020, it would not have interfered with the Abraham Accords. He states that he has no doubt that it would have had no effect upon Israel normalizing relations with the Arab states in the months that followed, namely due to security and economic issues which were the motivating factors behind the Abraham Accords.
Dermer shares that the person who deserves the most credit for the recognition of Jerusalem is David Friedman, but the person who deserves the most credit for the Abraham Accords is Jared Kushner.
There are more details than this discussed, but these are the main points of interest regarding the Kushner vs Bibi debate.
The first half of the interview also relates the Gaza conflict, so you will find this interesting as well.