Kushner’s account, the latest indication of a former Trump administration official taking a look at the White House’s somewhat chaotic presentation of his 2020 peace plan, appears to contradict Friedman, who insisted when he released the his own memoir earlier this year that he was at loggerheads with Kushner over the annexation issue, which he personally supported. “The accusation that I had my own agenda with Netanyahu [applying Israeli] sovereignty [to parts of the West Bank] and for the president not to know, for nobody to know, against Jared’s wishes — it’s 100 percent fake, 100 percent false,” Friedman told The Times of Israel in February. But Kushner tells a different story in “Breaking History: A White House Memoir,” due out Aug. 23. In it, Kushner recalls being furious as Netanyahu used his speech at the January 2020 unveiling of Trump’s peace plan at the White House to announce that the president had become the first world leader to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over much of West Bank and that as a result Israel will move towards annexing all West Bank and Jordan Valley settlements. Get The Times of Israel Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories By signing up, you agree to the terms For at least the next four years, Israel will maintain the status quo “in areas that your plan does not designate as part of Israel in the future,” Netanyahu told the US president. “Israel will maintain the possibility for peace.” The prime minister then added: “At the same time Israel will apply its laws to the Jordan Valley, to all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and to other areas that your plan designates as part of Israel and to which the United States have agreed to be recognized as part of Israel.” “This is not what we bargained for,” Kushner writes. “Under our plan, we would eventually recognize Israel’s sovereignty over agreed upon areas if Israel took steps to advance the Palestinian state within the territory we outlined,” he explains, insisting that US approval of Israeli annexation it would take time and was not a given. Then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with then-US President Donald Trump during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington on January 28, 2020. (AP/Susan Walsh) “I gripped my chair so hard that my knuckles turned white, as if my grip could make Bibi stop. I had specifically asked for the Israeli ambassador [to the US] Ron Dermer to make sure that Bibi kept his remarks short and above the politics of the day,” Kushner continues. “Both in tone and substance, the speech was badly misplaced. It contained nothing magnanimous or conciliatory towards the Palestinians. It was essentially a campaign speech for his domestic political audience and he misunderstood our plan.” As Netanyahu’s speech clocks more than 20 minutes into the bill, Kushner writes of his concern that the annexation pledge would undermine his effort to garner support for the peace plan from Arab countries, three of which had sent ambassadors to the unveiling ceremony . In a break with previous US administrations, the Trump plan envisioned the creation of a semi-contiguous Palestinian state in about 70 percent of the West Bank, a handful of neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, most of Gaza and parts of southern Israel — if the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, disarm Hamas and other terrorist groups in the coastal enclave, and meet other conditions. The plan also allowed Israel to eventually annex every one of its settlements, give the Jewish state sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and supreme security control west of the Jordan River. and prohibits Palestinian refugees from settling in Israel. “I had read them the peace proposal and I had given them my word this [then-US president Donald] Trump would present a decent and balanced proposal — one that required compromises on both sides. But that was certainly not the deal Bibi was describing,” Kushner writes. “If the mood went according to plan, it would have been done [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas in a difficult position. If he reacts harshly against a credible proposal, it would further alienate him while exposing the hollowness of his position. But the Israeli prime minister had given Abbas exactly the opening he needed to reject our plan.” As he and the president returned to the Oval Office after the ceremony, a visibly disappointed Trump told him: “Bibi gave a campaign speech. I feel dirty,” according to Kushner’s memoir. A close-up of the Trump administration’s “Conceptual Peace Vision Map,” released on January 28, 2020. “As it turned out, Ambassador David Friedman had assured Bibi that he would get the White House to support annexation more immediately. He had not conveyed this to me or anyone on my team,” Kushner writes. Friedman went further after the ceremony, telling reporters that Israel “doesn’t have to wait at all” for annexation and that the only limiting factor was “the time it takes to get internal approvals.” Kushner writes that he then confronted Friedman, who insisted he had accurately represented the Trump proposal. “Our discussion became heated and I took the plan out of the folder on my desk.” “‘Where does he say that in here?’ Kushner writes that Friedman responded by suggesting that he and Kushner “remain ambiguous and let Bibi say whatever she wants” to see how it goes. Kushner was unimpressed, responding that Friedman was unaware of the broader implications of Netanyahu’s claims. “You haven’t spoken to a single person from a country outside of Israel,” I replied. “You don’t have to deal with the British, nor the Moroccans, nor the Saudis or the Emiratis, who all take my word for it and make statements. I have to deal with the consequences of this. You don’t,” he writes. Then-U.S. President Donald Trump reaches to shake the hand of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas before a meeting at the Palace Hotel during the 72nd United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 20, 2017, in New York. (AFP photo/Brendan Smialowski) Friedman began to recognize the damage Netanyahu’s speech had caused and showed a willingness to back down, Kushner writes, adding that he ordered the envoy to meet with the Israeli prime minister and tell him the U.S. would not support his plan for immediate annexation of the West Bank. “Tell him … that if we’re lucky, this hasn’t completely killed my credibility in other countries and I’ll still be able to get the statements of support I’m tired of,” Kushner tells Friedman. “To his credit, Friedman cleared up the misunderstanding with the Israelis and the media.” Friedman told The Times of Israel on Sunday: “Jared and I have different memories of those intense days. But we agree that we reconciled our differences in a way that best served the US-Israel relationship. I insist on remembering the events as recounted in my memoir, ‘Sledgehammer’.” The former ambassador also pointed to Trump’s own remarks at the unveiling ceremony, in which he said the US “will form a joint commission with Israel to turn the [peace plan’s] conceptual map to a more detailed and calibrated performance so that recognition [of Israeli sovereignty] can be achieved immediately.” The fallout from the unveiling ceremony led to a strained relationship between the administration and the Netanyahu administration, with Israel’s ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer later storming into Kushner’s office to express his frustration, Kushner writes. Then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2nd from right) meets with US Ambassador Ron Dermer (right) in his office in Jerusalem. White House adviser Jared Kushner (center) US ambassador David Friedman (second left). and special envoy Jason Greenblatt, on July 31, 2019. (Kobi Gideon/GPO) Kushner didn’t take kindly to Dermer’s behavior and responded, “Don’t take us for granted… We’ve worked our asses off for three years to get to this point. For the first time, Israel has the moral high ground…. But now everything is confused. You guys think you have been so effective with this administration. I hate to push the reality on you, but we didn’t do any of these things because you talked us into it. We did them because we believe they were the right things to do.” “Dermer saw that he had gone too far. He apologized and left soon after, knowing it was up to them to clean up the political mess Bibi had created,” Kushner writes. Netanyahu eventually agreed to suspend his annexation plans later that year in exchange for normalizing relations with the United Arab Emirates — a deal brokered by Kushner and the Trump administration. Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations in Kushner’s book.
