The United States will not consent to Israeli annexations in the occupied West Bank for “some time,” preferring to focus on the Israel-UAE normalization deal and wider regional peacemaking, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner said on Monday.
The United Arab Emirates has said that its move to formalize relations with Israel, announced on Thursday, put paid to an annexation plan that angered Palestinians - who want the West Bank for a future state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu casts the annexation plan - already dogged by disputes within his governing coalition - as temporarily on hold. But he has also said he wants approval from Israel’s main ally first.
“Israel has agreed with us that they will not move forward without our consent. We do not plan to give our consent for some time,” Kushner told reporters in a telephone briefing.
“Right now, the focus has to be on, you know, getting this new peace agreement implemented.
“We really want to get as much interchange between Israel and the United Arab Emirates as possible and we want Israel to focus on creating new relationships and new alliances.”
The US-UAE-Israel joint statement on the normalization deal said Israel had agreed to “suspend” the annexation plan.
“What you’re saying as suspension, we’re seeing as stopping,” UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr. Anwar Gargash told reporters shortly after the deal was announced.
Kushner said the onus was on the Palestinians, who are boycotting US President Donald Trump’s administration for perceived pro-Israel bias, to come around to a new peace proposal it unveiled in January.
