[IsraelTimes] Israel must start aiding the Palestinians and helping to improve their quality of life if it wants to become fully integrated into the Middle East, says Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Israel has been making life better for the Palestinians since the 1930s. It would be really nice to see that noticed.
“The biggest message that we’ve tried to convey to the Israeli leadership now is that, now that the war is over, if you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle East, you have to find a way to help the Palestinian people thrive and do better,” he says, sitting alongside US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
He says that the pair are “just getting started” with relaying this message to Israel.
Regarding Kushner’s vision for the Palestinian people, and what he believes allowing them to “thrive” looks like, he says that the US is “focused on creating a situation for joint security and economic opportunity for Israelis and Palestinians so that they can live side by side in a durable way.”
“What you end up calling it over time, we’ll allow the Palestinians to determine that themselves,” he says, in answer to a question about a path to Palestinian statehood.
I do hope he is posturing for effect rather than naive enough to believe such foolishness.
As of early Monday, Hamas has yet to return 16 of the 28 deceased hostages that were still in Gaza when the ceasefire deal came into effect on October 10.
The terror group has said it is unable to immediately locate the remaining bodies due to the level of destruction in the Gaza Strip, but Israel has accused the terror group of lying, claiming that it has access to most of them and could hand them over at any time.
Asked about the conflicting accounts and the US’s role in navigating the differences, Kushner says there has been “a very intense effort on behalf of our joint center with Israel and with the mediators in order to convey whatever information Israel has on the whereabouts of the bodies to the mediators and to Hamas– in order to retrieve them.
The US is trying to “push both sides to be proactive in terms of finding a solution instead of blaming each other for breakdowns,” Kushner says.
Pressed on whether he believes Hamas is “acting in good faith — seriously looking for the bodies,” Kushner answers in the affirmative.
“As far as we’ve seen from what’s being conveyed to us from the mediators, they are so far,” he says. “That could break down at any minute, but right now– we have seen them looking to honor their agreement.”
[IsraelTimes] US Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff describes sharing a moment of connection with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya over their shared experience of losing a son, in an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes Program.
The US envoy met with al-Hayya in Egypt earlier this month during negotiations to end the war in Gaza, in a highly unusual face-to-face meeting between a US official and a member of the Palestinian terror group.
He says that when he entered the room for the meeting with the Hamas delegation, he found himself sitting directly next to al-Hayya.
“We expressed our condolences to him for the loss of his son,” says Witkoff. “He mentioned it. And I told him that I had lost a son, and that we were both members of a really bad club, parents who have buried children.”
Witkoff’s late son, Andrew, died at the age of 22 of an opioid overdose. Al-Hayya’s son, Himam al-Hayya, was killed in the Israeli airstrike on Hamas headquarters in Doha on September 9, which failed to kill any of the senior Hamas leaders it had targeted.
Kushner, for his part, describes watching the conversation between Witkoff and al-Hayya, whom he describes as a “hardened” person who has “been through two years of war.”
“They green-lit an assault that raped and murdered and did some of the most barbaric things,” he says of Hamas and the October 7, 2023, massacre that sparked the two-year war in Gaza. “They’ve been holding hostages while Gaza’s been bombed. And they’ve withstood all the suffering.”
“But when Steve and him spoke about their sons, it turned from a negotiation with a terrorist group to seeing two human beings kind of showing a vulnerability with each other.”
Interesting YouTube interview from April. Somewhat answers Charlie Kirk’s concerns about Israel neglecting outreach. A pity he and Emily Austin were not able to speak before he was murdered:
Posted by Skidmark 2025-10-20 13:25||
2025-10-20 13:25||
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7 Palestinians could improve life for themselves if they'd spend more time working on it and less time hating the Juice.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2025-10-20 14:28||
2025-10-20 14:28||
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8 From Skidmark’s CIA link:
Witkoff reveals how the CIA was briefing them both, multiple times a day, and the briefing itself was exactly the opposite of what Emir of Qatar and Presidents of Turkey and Egypt were telling them.
The CIA intelligence was the exact opposite of reality.
Given their history with regard to Israel, I would strenuously check anything said in both private and public by Egypt and Turkey. While it is of course true that they said whatever they said, that does not necessarily mean what they said is in any way true, even about themselves.
We did know it would take a while to clean up the CIA.
Posted by trailing wife 2025-10-20 21:24||
2025-10-20 21:24||
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