Jared Kushner’s ‘fantasy’ about the Middle East has gone up in smoke in Gaza: op-ed

In an op-ed for CNN this Thursday, Peter Bergen contends that Jared Kushner's attempts to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states was "predicated by a fantasy," especially evidenced by the latest round of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

The fantasy, according to Bergen was the notion "that peace would be achieved by negotiating without the Palestinians and instead by creating warmer relations between the Arab states and Israel. In Kushner's analysis, the road to peace in Israel ran not through Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank, but through the United Arab Emirates."

Kushner dismissed the Israel-Palestinian conflict as nothing more than a "land dispute," but as it turns out, Arabs actually do care about this dispute "not least because the third holiest site in Islam is the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, the site from which Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven," Bergen writes.

Now, the Biden administration has "inherited this Trumpian mess," Bergen writes.