As Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were preparing to embark on one of their most delicate political campaigns, his brother and sister-in-law, Joshua Kushner and Karlie Kloss, were preparing a weekend-long party in Wyoming to celebrate their wedding last fall.
The two worlds briefly collided when Jared and his wife visited Josh and Kloss in Wyoming, multiple sources tell PEOPLE.
It was there that Josh and Kloss, who married in October, just threw a three-day celebration of their nuptials alongside guests including Orlando Bloom and Katy Perry.
However, despite tabloid reports that Jared, 38, and his wife were there during the celebration, a source who attended says they actually only stopped by on Thursday night before the festivities on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
On Sunday Ivanka, 37, posted a photo to her Instagram Story of her and Jared outdoors, in a setting similar to social media posts from other attendees at the Wyoming party.
But the photo was taken elsewhere, says the source in attendance.
(A White House spokeswoman declined to comment the couple’s personal schedule.)
Both senior aides to Donald Trump, Jared and Ivanka have begun promoting the administration’s new plan to foster peace between Palestinians and Israel. Jared will speak about the proposal in Bahrain during a two-day “Peace to Prosperity” gathering.
Still, only the economic parts of the American peace plan have been announced, according to The New York Times. The plan’s funding is also more aspirational than concrete, with the U.S. not pledging any money and instead seeking private sources, grants and the support of Persian Gulf countries.
Jared told Reuters that the Bahrain trip was less a “conference” than a “workshop”: “We want to get feedback and hopefully finalize it so we can then coordinate a lot of the aid efforts and investing efforts to really drive results.”
“I laugh when they attack this as the ‘Deal of the Century.’ This is going to be the ‘Opportunity of the Century’ if they have the courage to pursue it,” he said of the proposal.
RELATED VIDEO: Trump Says Kim Kardashian Will Be ‘One of the Most Successful Lawyers’ During Her White House Visit
Jared has been a key architect of the Trump administration’s Middle East peace proposal, which he has been working on for several years, according to The Economist. He took his first solo trip to the Middle East to in 2017 to discuss peace with Israeli and Palestinian leaders separately, the Associated Press reported.
The $50-billion economic plan the administration has proposed, more than half of which would reportedly go to Palestinians, would mostly aid Palestinian territories over a 10-year period, Jared said.
The plan also calls for connecting the West Bank to the Gaza Strip via a transportation corridor and investing in the area’s tourism sector.
But it elides more persistent and more complicated issues dividing the Israelis and Palestinians, such as continued violence and conflicting political goals.
Jared told Reuters he hopes that the plan will bring more investment to the region, then “more jobs and better quality of life and hopefully more peace along with it.”
RELATED: Jared Kushner Says Trump Isn’t Racist — but He Won’t Talk About Trump’s ‘Long Ago’ Birtherism
Still, the talks have stirred backlash from some Palestinians, who have burned effigies of President Trump and rallied in protest leading up to the talks, Reuters reported.
“First lift the siege of Gaza, stop the Israeli theft of our land, resources and funds, give us our freedom of movement and control over our borders, airspace, territorial waters etc.,” one senior Palestinian negotiator tweeted, according to the Times. “Then watch us build a vibrant prosperous economy as a free and sovereign people.”
Jared himself has also faced criticism — as has Ivanka — about his lack of diplomatic or political expertise.
“I have to say that this is one of the hardest problems that exists in the world,” he told Reuters. “This conflict has been going on for a very, very long time and there’s been a lot of attempts at it which have all been very well-intended and noble attempts to try and solve it.”
from PEOPLE.com http://bit.ly/2X66vrx
No comments:
Post a Comment