Kushner says door open to Palestinians who dismiss unfunded peace plan as 'divorced from reality'

Jared Kushner wrapped up the launch of Washington's Middle East peace plan saying the "door was still open" to the Palestinian leadership to engage, while blaming them for the Israeli restrictions they face and accusing them of not caring about their people.

The two-day "Peace to Prosperity" workshop in Bahrain, which no Palestinian or Israeli official attended, saw banking heavyweights, Gulf finance ministers, business tycoons take the stage. A sole Palestinian joined them.

Within the audience at a luxury hotel in Manama were Israeli journalists and businessmen who for the first time travelled to Bahrain - a country that has previously had no diplomatic ties with their homeland.

At the heart was Donald Trump's 100-page $50bn economic vision for the region, which is the precursor to a wider political plan, but remains unfunded.

US special envoy Jason Greenblatt told reporters they may hold a pledging conference if the second tranche of the plan, which handles the politics, gets “traction”, but for now nothing was planned.

With little reference to the tricky political reality on the ground, panellists spoke in sweeping terms about medical technology advances, building football pitches and using Blockchain technology to fix property disputes.

Palestinian officials complained without addressing central issues like the Israeli and Egyptian imposed blockade on Gaza, and the military occupation of the West Bank, it was “divorced from reality”.

“The workshop attempts to circumvent the real issues by peddling in recycled and failed ideas,” the Palestinian Liberation Organisation said as the conference got underway. “It wants to sell a mirage of economic prosperity for the Palestinian people so long as they accept and endorse their perpetual captivity. This a formula that no dignified people can accept."

Senior Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi added that it was "insult to our intelligence" and simply “recycled” old ideas about economic growth.

"The elephant in the room in Manama is of course the occupation itself," she added. "The Israeli occupation, which was never mentioned - not once."

Mr Kushner defended his economy-first approach saying previous efforts, chained to the politics, “were stuck in a paradigm that never seems to… move forward”.

He told reporters: “The reason why we thought it was important to lay out the economic vision before we do the political vision is because we need people to feel like they could see what the future can look like."

He then challenged others to come up with better ideas saying it is “easy to be against things”, before lashing out at the Palestinian leadership and saying they “don't have a great track record of getting a deal done”.

The Palestinians severed diplomatic ties with Washington in 2017 after they recognised the contested city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and then slashed Palestinian aid include cutting all funding to the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency.

Ahead of the conference David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel and US Special Envoy Jason Greenblatt both said they believed Israel should be permitted to annex a portion of the West Bank, which would be illegal under international law.

The distrust between the Americans and Palestinians reached boiling point with the announcement of the 100-page plan which refers to a “Palestinian society“ not state and makes no reference to Israeli restrictions.

At the conference Mr Kushner blamed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza on “bad" Palestinian leadership "and the sanctions that have been imposed because of it”.

However, the approach of “decoupling the politics from the economics ” and steering clear of the conflict was praised by Gulf officials including Obeid al Al-Tayer, the UAE minister of state for financial affairs, who spoke on a panel with three other Gulf officials.

“We are looking at the issues and what will really work going forward that didn’t work over the past 50 years,” he said.

Christine Lagarde the head of the International Monetary Fund, also lauded the focus on job creation in her opening panel.

Tony Blair, who held a conversation with Mr Kushner, urged the Palestinians to “engage” saying "time is running out”.