[laughter] >> this weekend on c-span3 on american history tv. jared kushner set down to discuss the middle east peace efforts. my name is jim shriver. it is my pleasure to welcome you to the washington institute symposium. this event is being viewed live

around the world so i will be grateful if everybody turns the ringers off their phones, but feel free to tweet as much as you like. as the majorim annual event in washington, named in memory of two outstanding patrons of the institute whose generosity was critical to survival of the institute more than three decades ago. that generosity lives on with many members of their extended family who are with us today. like all donors are proud american citizens committed to an active and engaged american role in pursuit of security and peace and the middle east, to them and all of our supporters i say a heartfelt thank you.

[applause] in these hyper-partisan times i , am pleased to say you have entered a partisan free zone. that is an oxymoron in d.c. but , the washington institute is an independent nonpartisan research institution. we accept support from american citizens. we do not accept any money from any foreign government, entities persons.n not only do the trustees span the political spectrum, but faculty of experts women and men that are diplomats and scholars and military leaders span the spectrum of religions, ethnicities and nationalities , both here and the middle east.

their mission is simple to , provide government with information and analysis and ideas to advance the pursuit of security and peace in the middle east and equally important to do it on a timely basis. more than 30 years ago, both republican and democratic administrations -- for more than 30 years, they have recognized the talent on our staff to be in senior positions in both democratic and republican administrations. the tradition began with the author of the first policy paper, dennis ross, and it continues today. [applause] you didn't know dennis was that old, right? last year, jim jeffrey, our

distinguished fellow was asked to serve as the secretary of syria envoy. another member of our institute family took a step closer to assuming a senior position when the senate foreign relations committee voted 19-3 to recommend to the full senate the confirmation of our fellow, david shanker. [applause] to serve as assistant secretary of state for near east affairs. david, on behalf of the staff and trustees of the washington institute, please accept our warmest congratulations. [applause] we have a very full and exciting program this evening. to introduce our keynote event, i'm pleased to welcome my friend and partner, our outstanding

institute president, shelley cason. [applause] shelley: thank you, jim. and thank you for your decades of leadership and dedication to the institute. i want to add my own welcome to the hundreds of trustees who are here this evening, especially members of our young leadership who have taken time from their professional and family lives to join us. your presence underscores the depths of your commitment to the institute. [applause] shelley: from our earliest days, the pursuit of peace has been central to our mission. peace between arabs and israelis is not just a noble goal, it is a worthy american interest. it is not the only interest we

have in the middle east nor always the most urgent, but it helps define what we as americans stand for. and for more than 30 or years, the scholars and experts at the washington institute have offered advice and ideas to administrations of both parties on how to achieve this important goal. considerable progress has been made including peace treaties , between israel and arab states and incremental but important progress with the palestinians. but peace remains elusive. tonight we will have the , opportunity to take a close look at the next chapter of america's effort to promote peace. we will do that with the person who president trump has entrusted to lead the american peace effort, his senior adviser, jared kushner. [applause]

shelley: thank you. a graduate of harvard university with a joint law degree, mba from nyu, mr. kushner was a real estate developer before joining the 2016 election campaign that brought his father-in-law to the white house. as senior adviser to the president, he has a broad range of responsibilities from international trade and immigration to criminal justice reform. but tonight we will focus, of course, on the middle east, the pursuit of arab/israeli peace. and our format will be spontaneous and unscripted, a conversation between jared kushner and our executive director, rob satloff. as most of you know, rob is the washington institute. he has been our director for the past 26 years. [applause]

shelley: among his many talents, rob is also a professional interviewer. for the past 14 years, he has hosted a weekly talk show on the u.s. government arabic satellite channel, explaining to middle east viewers how washington works or doesn't work, as the case may be. tonight we get to see those , interviewing skills in action. and if you don't appreciate all the nuances of their discussion, fear not. after dinner, our own peace process brain trust will be on stage to decipher precisely what we heard and what we didn't hear. and on behalf of the washington institute, i am pleased to welcome mr. jared kushner. [applause] jared: good evening, everyone.

this is a very special evening. i'm delighted all of you could join us for this discussion about the trump administration's approach to middle east peace. we're going to spend the next 45 minutes in a bit of a strange conversation, talking about something but not really talking about it. rob: because tonight, unless we're going to make even more news than i expect, tonight is not the big reveal. that day, if it happens, won't be for another month at the earliest. but there is still quite a lot to talk about the middle east peace process without actually talking about the middle east peace plan. so, first, i just want to extend again my thanks to you, jared, for joining us for this occasion. [laughter] jared: thank you.

thank you, rob. and thank you for having me. it's an honor to be here with all of you tonight. rob: so let's begin with what you're proposing. is it? [laughter] rob: no, no. i've listened carefully to the statements that you've made and your colleagues have made. will it be a plan, a vision, a framework, a proposal? which one of these words is an accurate description of what we're going to hear? jared: so we could use a lot of different words to describe what it is that we've been working on, but we're going away from all the typical diplomatic speak about how do you describe things at a high level. what we've put together over the last year is i would say more of an in-depth operational document that shows what we think is possible and how the people can live together, how security could work, how interaction can

work and really how do you try to form the outline of what a brighter future could be. you know, i've worked very closely now for the last two years on this with jason greenblatt who's been absolutely phenomenal, an amazing lawyer a great partner in this, and obviously with david friedman who's been a great ambassador and also was a great lawyer in his time and with avi. and what we've done is we've been able to -- we started by studying what had been tried and how people had approached this to date and why we thought in our estimation it hadn't been successful at the time. so the first phase was really an assessment phase. and we did that by studying the different efforts, we read a hot -- a lot of books. we spoke to a lot of people, we traveled around the region, we spoke to negotiators who had been doing this for a long time, we spoke to the neighboring countries, and we really tried to pull from them what they thought could be an appropriate solution to this. and so as with we got forward, we started saying, well, a lot of the discussion and a lot of

the disagreement seems to be antibiotic about these high-level concepts. i always found in my business career when you'd have a dispute on a contract, you'd go into the details, and you could usually resolve things because that is what you do when we -- when you are motivated to move forward. so we said, why don't we just start writing this out, you know, two-state versus one state. you know, you can't say two-state, and i realized that means different things to different people. it means one thing to the israelis, one thing to the palestinians, so we said let's not say it. let's work on the details of what this means. so we started writing down a document, and we started with five pages and made it to ten pages, twenty pages, thirty pages, and we kept refining it as we would get more and more input along the way. so i think what we've put together is a document that i do believe addresses a lot of these issues in a very detailed way, probably a more detailed way than has ever been done before. what, hopefully, that will do is show people this is possible.

if there are disagreements, hopefully, they can disagree about certain specifics as opposed to disagreeing about high-level concepts. if you look at a lot of past negotiations, they're basically trying to wordsmith documents to basically not agree but not admit that they do not agree. that's not how you solve problems, that's how you defer problems. i enjoy working for this president, but one of the things i admire is he's not going to allow you to pretend something's solved when it's not solved. his view is we should either solve it or admit that it's not solved and really try to work hard at putting a solution for it. the second thing we started putting together was an economic vision for the region. what we did is we started looking at the divide in the region. and, you know, when i was on the campaign, all the experts were saying, well, you have the sunnis and the shias, and that's the big divide with the arabs. but what i see is the big guide now is leaders who are trying to empower their people and create more opportunity for them to have a better life, and then you have leaders that are trying to

repress their people, often using religion and other excuses as a reason to try and hold their people down. so when we looked at the palestinians, we said, well, what are the opportunities that they can have? what's been holding them back economically? obviously, you have the core issues because you have to resolve the core issues to move forward but we started building , an economic vision for how do you take that region and push it forward in a more substantial way. and so i think we built a very good business plan. we studied what they did in poland and how that was successful, we studied south korea, we studied japan, we studied singapore, and we studied areas like ukraine where they had a pretty good plan, but there was not very good execution, and a lot of the governance was off. so what we will be able to put together is a solution that we believe is a good starting point for the political issues. and then a outline for what economically can be done to help these people start living a better life. and i do believe this, is that there is a greater division

between the experts and the people who negotiate this and talk about this and work at the think tanks and work in the negotiations than there is between the people. i think the people fundamentally want to live together, i think the people fundamentally want to have better lives. i think they want their kids to have jobs, they want to be able to pay their mortgage, and think -- i think that is a very -- undet underlie our rlyer. and i think everybody wants to live with dignity. the israelis want no know they have got security, that's important for this administration, israel's security. and i think if we work it well and we put pit out and people look at it with a fresh perspective, i think there'll be a lot of opportunity to start a new proposition and hopefully, that leads to the a breakthrough. and i will just say this, this is a very hard problem. this is probably one of the hardest problems maybe that exists in the world. and when the president asks us to take this on, you know, jason, david, myself, he says, no, i want you guys to really try to solve this. i don't want you to make an effort and create a downside so

you can blame somebody else if it fails. i believe this is an issue that needs to be solved. said i don'te , think if you soft in the rest of the region turns out well, be -- i think you can't fix the whole region without this being resolved. it is something that's held the region back. if you think about just the middle east, what china's been able to accomplish between 2001 and today, they've built, you know, an amazing economy, they've built a great country, they've taken hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. if you look at the middle east and what's happened with all the war and all the conflict and all the division, they basically stayed in place, maybe even gone backwards. if we can figure out how to change the paradigm and get people to focus on betterment of life and how do you create more opportunity, and somehow we have to break this cycle, i do think there's a lot of potential for them to get on a good path. there's a lot of wealth, a lot of resources, where it's located strategically a lot of really great people. so we're finding reasons to be optimistic, and we're giving it the best shot we can. rob: so let me ask you two why

questions. the big why and then the tactical why. i know you started to answer the big why, but i want to go a little bit deeper. recently at the time 100 event you explained that the , administration had four big priorities in the middle east. the first three, where i sit, certainly make a lot of sense -- confronting iran, defeating isis, combating the ideology of radical is lawmakers extremism. the question is about what comes up number four. if you had said solving the world's worst humanitarian crisis, yemen, ok. if you had said solving the world's worst refugee crisis, syria, ok. what makes solving the israeli/palestinian crisis -- an important issue, to be sure -- what makes that rise to the level of being at that high priority? jared: so i would think that if

you would have gone back five, six years and if you would have asked people what they thought was the biggest issue in the region, they would have said it was this issue. and i think that what i said at that last interview was that those were the four issues that we were outlining when we went to saudi arabia. and the president chose to take his first trip to saudi arabia, and he thought that it was important to really get everyone to come together to try to solve these issues and say that this is not america's responsibility, this is not saudi arabia's responsibility, this is all of our collective responsibility. and i do think that on those first three issues we've made tremendous progress. if you think about what the president's done to get out of the jcpoa, the iran deal, i think we've tried to do everything we can to make sure that all of the different areas where they're being aggressive whether it's yemen, whether it's , syria, whether it's with hamas, whether it's hezbollah, to make sure that we limit their resources so that they're not able to export terror in the way that they have done. and the administration's been

very clear with iran. we want to be able to work with iran, but we want them to not be looking outward. and once they focus on trying to make their country better and improving their lives, we're happy to work with them on doing that, but they can't be infringing and trying to destabilize the whole region. that's been a very, very important issue for the president. and, again, they chant death to israel, death to america, the same thing that the houthis do in yemen. so the yemen issue, i think, is more an offshoot of the iran issue, so i kind of put that in the same box because that's the root cause of what's happening there with the instability. with regards to isis, when we came into this administration, the caliphate was very, very large, and isis was obviously in a stronger position. and i think the president, you r immediately. that was one of the first orders he set out -- we need a global coalition to figure out how to defeat this, and i think he works very well with his

generals. theat down and studied problem very carefully, and i think the progress we have made beyonds unquestionably people's expectations. i remember the news we see during the campaign about people's expectations, and it was brutal. now that is something that is physically gone, the caliphate. , in regards to the ideology and thinking about -- you can kill a terrorist, you can kill a fighter, but how do you make sure that this is not just spawning more and you are not dealing with this problem for a much longer time to come? i think the work we have been and to do with saudi arabia a lot of the leaders to figure out how you get information out, how you win the war on the internet, how you make sure that you are monitoring very closely who was preaching what and making sure that people are restoring islam to what it should be as a religion of jesus

as a religion of tolerance, and i think we have made progress in terms of that. there have been some good leaders that have worked with the president there. i think the progress is very good in two years. again, in regards to this issue, we see israel as a very special country. it is the only democracy in the region, it is america's strongest ally, they are a great military partner. we do a lot of business with them in a lot of ways. israel's security is something that is very important to this country. it is something that is very important to the president and something we want to see resolved. i think that a lot of what we will do here in order for israel to be secure long-term, they need to resolve this issue, it is important and you have to make compromises in order to do that. i do not think anyone will question if we make israel asked to make a compromise in our proposal, that we ask them to do things that put them at risk security wise. i do not think the president --

you would not take decisions himself that he would think would put america and the people he represents at risk, and would not expect another leader to do that, but he also thinks that if you are able to help the palestinian people have dignity and opportunity and create a new paradigm and break this cycle, he thinks that is within the whole region's interests, and also america's interest. we spent a lot of money in that region, our military is based there, there is a lot of threat that comes from that region, and the more we can lean towards stabilization, that is an important thing. syria is an important issue as well, and i think that is something we should spend time working on, and i know secretary pompeo has been working hard to find what the correct outcome is there, that is another one of the top priorities. rob: let me ask you the tactical why, which is why do you think the circumstances are right for a u.s. peace plan now he?

administration officials have said from time to time that the plan would not be presented until the time was right. as has beent, reported, that june 2019 is the time, give or take, what makes that the right time? mr. kushner: sure. when i got in, people told me you were crazy to work on this. it is not the right time, it is impossible, it will never happen. i do not think there was ever a perfect time to do this, but what we have been able to do for the past couple of years is put ourselves in a position where we do feel like now is a good time to put something out there. i think when we made the decision to recognize jerusalem, the president asked, will this make your job easier or harder? i said i think short-term it is probably harder, because people will be more reactive and emotional and they are not used to a president that is keeping his word, making tough decisions, and doing what he thinks is right in that regard and such in that is going to be

a different thing. but long-term, i think it helps. what we need to start doing is recognizing truths. when we recognized jerusalem, that is truth. jerusalem is the capital of israel, and that would be part of any final agreement anyway. [applause] and i think that was a very important component. same thing with recognizing golan heights. israel has had go along for 52 years. it has been relatively peaceful since they have had it. syria is kind of a mess right now and you have a leader that has committed mass genocide and the territories are all disputed and broken up. i do not think there are many questions to go along that it should be part of israel, and we recognize that too. we are in a position now, prime minister netanyahu will hopefully build a strong coalition, and we will work with him to see what we can do. i think in the arab world, there

is a lot of impatience to do with the palestinian issue. the clause is kind of running dry a little bit in regards to -- people have been funding this thing for a long time. they've got more aid than any group of people in history, and what we have to show for it is really not much at this point, unfortunately. there are some people who have done very well, and maybe those people like the situation, where the aid is coming in and in reaching a few the top, but it has not trickled down to the people. maybe that is a disincentive for people wanting to solve issues. so you have had people trying to solve it for a long time, and the perfect track record of not achieving a solution. maybe they like it that way. i see them attacking the deal, they do not even know what is in it yet. me maybe they want the status quo. we want to put something out that we think is based on logic, that we can say, this will lead to the palestinian people

leading a much better life, and we hope people act rationally. i do think it will be a test for the arab countries and for the international community. are they going to be stuck in reflexive positions that don't make any sense and have not created peace, or are they going to look at this for what it is, study it, and say, this makes sense. why don't you try to engage with it? if you have problems with these details, why don't you sit down? i think this is a problem that deserves to be solved, and leadership from both sides will sit together and try to figure out, based on the framework we provide, how we can move forward. rob: you made a reference to leadership from both sides. there is really no ignoring the fact that one of the and theip's loves you other leadership publicly vilifies the administration. is that an environment, from your experience, that is

conducive to negotiating success? mr. kushner: i would say doing it to the old way has not really worked, so our view is, we are who we are and we are going to say what we say, we are going to do what we think is right, and people will either react positively to it or negatively to it, but at least people know that we are going to be honest with what we do. hopefully people will be surprised when they see this, that we have tried very hard to set a very, very difficult of issues -- i said this before, but i had a business mentor that whenever he had to make a just decision -- tough decision, would make a teach art -- a t chart. i think when they look at what they are losing versus what they are gaining, there are a lot more benefits to doing it versus not doing it. when i speak to people, a lot of the stated position of arab countries is, we are going to do something along the lines of the

arab peace initiative. that was a noble idea in 2002 when they put it out, but if that was a recipe to create peace, it would have made peace 17 years ago. makever a deal is going to -- you have the palestinian position, the israeli position, and whatever is going to be resolved has to be somewhere in the middle. i think both leaderships are a little nervous to talk about what the potential compromise solutions could be. our hope is that we hope them -- help them get closer by putting this out. rob: let me pursue that line of questioning for a moment. you and jason greenblatt have said that the plan will answer all the court questions and it will provide a vision of how life could be better for palestinians and how the israelis can achieve what they want most -- security. first, let's clarify this. announced thedent move of the embassy from jerusalem, a move i supported,

by the way, his statement wecluded the following -- " are not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of israel he sovereignty in jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders. those are up to the parties involved. just to be clear, you are going to propose answers to those issues? mr. kushner: correct. rob: you will, ok. let's look at that equation -- better life for palestinians, security for israel. palestinians have found a lot of quality-of-life enhancements. that sounds like money. a lot of money. whose money are we talking about? rumor has it that middle east countries have not been lining up to pony up to support this. will there be a substantial anteing up?

mr. kushner: again, you have to be mindful of rumors. one thing i am proud of that i have been able to accomplish in two years is that we have been able to keep this very close. we have had a leaky environment in here, in washington, where a lot of things leak, but nothing has leaked on my team. that is something we are very proud about. that has built a lot of trust with us with a lot of our counterparts, whether it is israel or middle eastern countries. i think they have all seen after talking with us directly, nothing has ever made it to the press. and i think that over time, it builds more trust and a lot of us have more productive discussions because we are willing to discuss things more freely, which is very, very important. so i would not go off what you said. look, i think it goes like this.

we have to decide, do we want to keep throwing money into a situation that perpetuates a situation, and even makes it worse? one thing i thought was very funny was they said, oh, we are accused of trying to separate palestinian people. i was reading a book on hamas fatas, and they are accusing hamas of the same things they were accusing us of 10 years earlier. the situation has gone back and bad in a very, very bad way. i do think it is important for the improvement of people's lives to have an environment where people feel like they can invest right. i see so many well intended programs through the different aid agencies and different project owners, and they get some entrepreneurs together and get an industrial zone or whatever it is, but the reality is, an still you establish borders, security, rule of law, transparency, eliminate

corruption and enforce property rights, and put people in a position where they have an environment where people can make investments and feel comfortable about it, you are never going to see that economy rise, or see the living standards rise, and you will never see people start to have the self-determination of a better life that they have been talking about and wanting to get for a long time. so i think we have a real chance to do this, but i think the to have to come together. i have spoken to a lot of countries about supporting this. i spoke with some members of congress about supporting this, and we will see. i think it is something that hopefully i can get people to sign up for. so far, i would say people are very happy with the products that we have put together. i think they think it is very in depth -- and when you see it, you will understand why it took us so long. that is something hopefully people will see as a thoughtful effort. ad i will say this to you -- lot of commentary, and in washington, a lot of people with

opinions, obviously. but i have been saying that people should be -- it is easy to wants to sound like a wise man in this business and talk about why it is hard or why this could fail, or what we are doing wrong, but the reality is that -- my favorite quote i have read about the middle east, someone the in the middle east, pessimists are usually right, the optimists are usually wrong, but the optimists drive the change. people will hopefully look at all of this stuff and say, we want to help you push this forward. we want to push folks to try to figure out how to move forward comments it of finding excuses -- forward, instead of finding excuses to not move forward. this has been stuck for a long time, there have not been a lot of fresh ideas, there have not been any breakthroughs in a long time, and the reality is that the situation is getting more and more untenable.

we did not create a lot of the problems. i showed up here two years ago, but i was given the assignment of trying to find a solution between the two sides, and i think what we opted for was a framework that is realistic, it is execution of all -- executable, and something i think will lead to both sides being much better off. rob: that is the way i approached it. fair enough. you briefly referred to, a few moments ago, to the concept of state. i want to ask you about this. 10 years ago in a historic minister netanyahu outlined his call for a demilitarized palestinian state. peace, "in my vision of two or three people's living side-by-side in a small land with good neighborly relations, mutual respect, each with a flag, anthem, and government. does that still apply in your said, we are i

going to put out a very extensive document -- [laughter] mr. kushner: we will let you decide, and i'm sure you will write something very interesting on it when it comes out. [laughter] [applause] mr. kushner: all right? all right, all right. rob: well, let me ask you a different question. [laughter] the election campaign, prime minister netanyahu committed himself to beginning the process of annexation of israeli territory at some point. something that he had never publicly said before. what is the administration's view on israel annexation of territory in the west bank? would you have a problem if this was done before the plan was presented? have you told this to the prime minister? so i have not discussed this with the prime minister, and i do hope that what will happen is, as he forms his government, we have been giving him space to do that.

i imagine that once there is a government formed, we will start engaging on this process and have a discussion. i do hope that what we are doing -- i said i hope both sides will take a good look at it, the israeli side and the palestinian side, before any unilateral steps are made, and they will discuss it and see if they believe this is the pathway to a better future. statement tofair say that one can either have unilateral annexation or a negotiated solution, but not both? mr. kushner: well, one thing i saw a early on in this is that there was a lot of -- our team have a lot of issues that come up every day. a lot of people can relate to this, where every day you are told well, they are doing this, they are doing that. --aid to my team, a guy guys, we are not in the mathematician business.

our job is we try to find a solution between the two countries, and that is the disease. a lot of things that are happening are symptoms of the disease. it is not our job to deal with the symptoms, it is their job to deal with between each other. try toeve our job is to propose something that could actually cure the disease. if you cure the disease, a lot of the symptoms go away. again, that is what we have been focused on. your are a lot of distractions. remind ourselves every day -- we have done this the past two years -- there are about a thousand ways to fail, and we have tried every day to make the right decisions to try to push forward and give ourselves the highest probability of doing something that could make a difference and achieve a good outcome, and avoid decisions and situations that will give us a pathway to achieving that outcomes. again, if you were taking the smart money that, the smart money bet is that this is a tough problem and it has been i dod for a long time, but

hope we are able to change the paradigm and put something forward that gets both sides to very seriously look at the facts and try to navigate a way where they can allow their people to be better off in the long term. that is important to me, jason, and david. metaphor,sed the "during the disease." i want to ask about your definition of success. solving,s actually resolving this problem, as you suggested? ofsuccess the middle bar getting the two sides to engage on what you proposed? 's success the lower bar of getting a quarter of arab states to say this is serious and worthy of discussion? what, in your view, is a legitimate, reasonable bar of success? being very: you are

washington with this question, because -- [laughter] again, i am not thinking about it that way. goal was to go in, we were asked to try and solve the problem. one of the things the president is good at is coming into a situation and being very flexible, from the beginning to the end of it. we have tried to develop a path, we have assessed it, we have tried to tailor make a solution. one thing we have done very differently versus what has been done in the past, i remember my first meeting out, i met with israeli and palestinian negotiators, and asked them, let's take these issues. on this one issue, what is an outcome you think you could accept that the other side could live with? >> 1948, 19 67 -- he said, go through 1948 to 1967 -- i said no, i don't want to go through the history of that,

what is an outcome that would work? could go to oslo, go to madrid -- i don't want to talk about process, i want to talk about what potential outcomes could be here. g to getry temptin involved in problems that i shouldn't and fight about things that are not operational to people's lives, but we have tried to focus on a solution that i think is viable, and in the last place, is trying to figure out what an appropriate process is to change that as much as possible. at a minimum, people will look at this and see it is serious, and change the discussion. i think the discussion has gotten stale, nothing has worked, and our approach has been if we are going to fail, we do not want to fail the same way it has been done in the past. rob: you want to be original in your failure. [laughter] mr. kushner: hopefully the goal is not to fail, but what i think we want to do is figure out how to do this in an intuitive way. you have people who are not from

politics or diplomacy, and what we have tried to do that is due to do it do this in a very rational way. hopefully both sides will look at this and think it is a serious proposal. it stimulates discussions and thought, and leads to some breakthroughs that have been elusive for a very long time. we wanter one goal is the palestinian people's lives to get better and we want israel's security to be stronger, and we want both sides to be able to find a pathway to come together and figure out how to breathe -- break some of these previously unbridgeable divides. rob: based on the equation you just laid out, palestinian lives to be better, israelis to be secure, is it not unreasonable for the palestinian to hear that is myon and say, where political aspiration in that

equation? themuld be reasonable for to say. i do not hear if i am a palestinian. i do not hear my political aspirations in the equation of my life being better and the israeli security being secure. mr. kushner: i will say this very straight, the average a ton ofan don't have faith in their government, their neighbors, israel, or in america. they have been lied to for a long time by a lot of people, and i think they are at a place where they do not know what to believe or who to believe. situation,fortunate but they have been pawns in a greater game in the middle east for a long time. a lot of palestinians were kicked out of arab countries for whatever reasons and put into situations in iran. eric countries that share of countries that claimed -- arab

countries that claims to care for them would not take them into their countries. so you have a situation where you have hamas in gaza, which is driving that plays into the ground, and i think the people are hostages to the care organization, and that is an unfortunate situation. in the west bank, you have people who are pretty repressed. again, i think they question whether the leadership is looking after their interests or not. for palestinians, i think the political aspirations are important. i do think they will address a lot of their political aspirations and dignity -- that is important to us. but i think they are at a point where they are not able to live the life they think they deserve, because a lot of this has screwed it up for them. i do think we think about that a lot. theead of coming this from political lens and say ok, let's jump into this and do the political negotiation that has been done before, let's focus on the palestinian people.

we spoke to a lot of palestinian people, business leaders, a lot of people, and said what it is -- what is it you are looking for? we tried to design something that we think could be very acceptable to them. the question will be whether the leadership has the courage to try and jump into it and a cheat at, and whether they have the intent for preservation or the intent for actually bettering the lives of their people. again, the strategic advantage we have now is we know what is in the plan. we believe it is virtuous and that it is something that is beneficial to both sides. it has been very disheartening for us to see that the palestinian leadership has basically been attacking a plan that they don't know what it is, as opposed to reaching out. if they truly cared about making the lives of the palestinian people better, i think they would have taken different decisions over the last year -- maybe over the last 20 years, but that is my opinion. but that doesn't matter. the unique thing about this is

we are going to put it out. everyone has a rush opportunity to try and engage with it, and when we do, we will be able to see what happens. people have speculated in a million ways who will be supported and you will not. we don't know. we have been talking to people and having a lot of discussions, and i think people will be surprised with it, but i hope people act rationally. they take what we put out, read it, look at it for what it is, not what it is not, and say, have there been any better ideas put forward? could this work? based on that, they push forward. we are doing the best we can, and again, i think it is not b that hasis a door been presented or we have taken away from them or that has existed that has led them to achieve things that are so good for them. we are just being realistic, and i think that is unfortunately the situation, as we found it, but we are doing our best to try

to find a solution that i believe will have a lot of opportunity for both sides. rob: you referred a moment to go to the laying out the plan. i want to ask you briefly about the rollout of the plan, since we are not going to get into the details of what is in the plan. why wouldn't you want to get into the details? [laughter] rob: is the plan going to be a surprise to prime minister netanyahu, to the leaders of jordan and syria -- sorry, not syria, saudi arabia and egypt? [laughter] rob: are they going to be reading about it the same day we do, or will they be briefed ahead of time, and will you welcome their input at all before the final, final version is delivered? mr. kushner: to date, we have kept the details very close. the way we have kept it very close is that nothing has leaked out, and i think that has been a great asset.

we are making the calls now. we are finally deciphering the process, how we are going to do it, but i think all of our allies and partners be very well consulted, and i do think that hopefully we are putting people to make sureon they can be as supportive as possible, but that is not based on relationship, that is based on substance. it willfigure out what be, but the good thing about what i do is who i speak with, when i speak to them, the people who need to know about it know about it, but the people who don't usually don't. -- theu said so earlier no success.is on after all, you are hoping to accomplish what every president since nixon and every secretary of state since kissinger has in one way, shape or form tried to do, so the smart money is not on success, given especially the

high bar you have outlined for success and actual resolution of the conflict. have you factored into your thinking the locations of failure? has its own set of outcomes and its own impact on the various parties. what do you think about the potential applications of ail your? -- of failure? thing different to me about being in washington, everyone in washington can complain about the status quo. when you try to put something in play to make something better, then all of a sudden everything goes crazy about all the stuff that could go wrong, and people talk about how they could also get worse. but the reality is if you want to make something better, you have to take a risk that it could get worse. our goal is to figure out how we mitigate the downsides and do everything possible to try and achieve the upsides?

what i think we are doing here -- we have been doing this for two years -- we have just been telling the truth. i think with our actions we are telling the truth, dealing with reality, and i think when you do that, it leads to a better place. so we are pretty confident that this will be a good basis for discussion. success can look like a lot of different things. it can look like an agreement, a better discussion, lead to gosar -- closer cooperation or resolve some issues -- maybe not. i think the situation is such think thathat i just it has to move forward. i think that not trying is a big problem too. i do think too -- and i learned this in business -- sometimes doing nothing is a decision, and doing nothing is a decision. we usually do not think that is a successful decision unless we are doing it intentionally. i think the status quo and where

it is headed to is not the ideal situation, and we hope what we put out has a lot of different pathways that can potentially make this better. becauset on this point, a very wise -- some would even say a brilliant observer of the peace process wrote -- and i paraphrase -- [laughter] rob: issuing the middle east peace plane in the current environment is a lose-lose proposition. palestinianor a rejection to push for annexation, releasing forces that drive a stake in the heart of u.s.-israel relations while destroying israeli and palestinian security operation, perhaps even the palestinian authority. is that at least the potential outcome? mr. kushner: it is so much easier being a writer. [laughter]

mr. kushner: now, it will be what it will be, and we spend our time trying to focus on, what do we believe is the highest probability path we can take to create a good outcome, and how do we do everything to mitigate that outcome? one thing i have seen in the building i work in is it is not like you are faced every day with a problem, and they say this is a good option and this is a bad option. it is usually this is a bad option, this is a really bad option, and you are trying to figure out a lot of these tough problems which you are inheriting, coming in and trying to assess it. we have a lot of problems on a lot of issues, and i admire the way that the president and his national security team -- not just on this issue, but globally we came into what we felt was a strategy free environment. i think the president with h.r. mcmaster and now john bolton have taken the world and said, these are our priorities. we put together a national

security strategy, we put together integrated strategies on how to get there. president is taking on a lot of different files at once, and he can only do that because he has a strong vision, a ton of energy, and a team that is well coordinated. whether it is secretary pompeo, john bolton, myself on a couple of files, bob lighthizer, steven mnuchin, dealing with the trade issues are the conflict issues, our national security issues, i do think we have a very good team working with strategies, toking and coordinated figure out how we create the best outcomes possible. we are looking. america is a great country. have come to really appreciate what our place is in the world, what our influence can be in the world, especially on the trading president brought a fresh approach that was needed. these deals should have been

balanced a long time ago, and i think it took someone unbalanced like this president and -- unpredictable like the president and balanced like bob lighthizer to come in and shake these up. people were predicting what could go wrong, tariffs and retaliation, but the president understands how to calibrate risk, and he understands the power of the american market and has not gotten us into any wars. he is trying to figure out how to draw us down from wars, but he is trying to figure out how to reestablish america's place in the world, but figure out how to balance some of these relationships. they are out of whack. i guess that is a little bit of a rambling answer from what you asked, but we view it every day. we come in and look at the different challenges, and we try to figure out how to achieve an outcome. it is easy to talk about how everything you do has the potential to go wrong, but we have a lot of really smart people in the government, everything we do is peer-reviewed and we challenge each other, and we challenge

each other peacefully now. note is a very collaborative group. not everyone agrees with each other, but the president likes it that way. at the end of the day, there is one decision-maker, and that is the president. mr. kushner: -- rob: this is where i want to end the conversation. does the president have a plan? the president has been involved from the very beginning, and this is something he asked me to work on because it was an issue he wanted to see engaged with. one thing working for this president, it is absolutely amazing because he has definitely increase the metabolism of government in the so manyat he's got different cabinet secretaries and administration officials working on so many different files, and he is on top of all of us. he is involved with the details, he has been pushing us, we have him supporting back with with regularity.

thisve still been defining draft, but the president has been very involved in creating this and the strategy, and he is a very hands-on leader. that has been a lot of fun to work with him on. this is one he does care about, and he would like us to go forward with it in a good way. rob: lastly, sometime before you go public, i assume there will be some kind of oval office meeting or mar-a-lago family dinner, perhaps, when the president turns to you and asks ok, jerry, honestly, what is your opinion? this plan is going to have my name on it. is this going to be a winner? you know i like winners. i really hate losers. which is this? [laughter] rob: we don't have to do it. is it worth it? mr. kushner: when you work for a president, you try hard not to disappoint, but you can disappoint.

when you work for your father-in-law, you cannot disappoint. [laughter] [applause] mr. kushner: i think i have established a good track record now. all the different tasks he has given me, i have come back with results and good advice, and i do think this is something that he will be proud of. i think this is something that will be a document that will be elevating the discussion on an issue that is hard. i think when you are in the white house, the biggest mistake is not to try to solve hard problems. whether that is on criminal justice reform, i have learned doing the mexico-canada deal, which everyone said we would never get a deal with mexico. at the last minute we got a deal with mexico, then everyone said we would never get a deal with canada and we got a deal with canada, and then i did the same on criminal justice. people say now, just because you have criminal justice, why do you think you can work on immigration? if you are in the white house where we are, you are supposed to try hard to

solve hard problems. and if you are not trying hard, you are wasting your time. i think this president is not afraid to fail at things, and he is not someone sitting there saying, what is the political calculus on this or that? he says, this is what i think it is right, this is what i think is wrong. he is willing to let us swing big at heart problems as long as we are doing it in a smart and responsible way. i think this is something the president will be proud of, and hopefully the community will look at. forlook, people should root this to succeed. people should want for this to succeed. people should want people to take these issues that maybe have held them apart for a long time and say ok, do you know what? both parties have to give -- gain a little bit -- give a little bit, but you also both gain a little bit. i think the president will lay out a framework that is very defensible, that is something

that has a lot of new ideas in it and is something that i think he will be very proud of, and hopefully those will lead to some breakthroughs. i am personally very honored that he asked me to do this. it has been an honor working on this file. i'm doing a lot of things that i never thought i would be doing in my life. this is not the plan i had, but it is an honor to work on it. if we can make breakthroughs that help people live better and safer lives, i think there is nothing more noble than trying to pursue peace between people, although it is really hard. rob: ladies and gentlemen, give your attention to mr. jared kushner. thank you very much. [applause]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] of peaces. institute is hosting a live panel discussion this afternoon, examining what is next for the afghan peace process. officials arean resuming peace talks for the first time since march. to addressected foreign troop coverage and counterterrorism. this is live on c-span.

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