A senior aide to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he hopes Donald Trump's Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, can help bring about an end to the conflict with Israel.
His spoke out after Kushner was announced as the president-elect's Middle East peace envoy.
"We hope that Mr. Kushner...will be able to do what all of his predecessors have tried to do, and will finally achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians," said Husam Zomlot, Abbas's adviser for strategic affairs. "This is a position that requires a firm commitment to the US's longheld policies," he told the Jerusalem Post (JP).
Zomlot claimed that the appointment demonstrated Trump's commitment to seeking an agreement between the Palestinians and Israel early in his presidency, adding that he was optimistic.
"It's a good sign that President- elect Trump early on appointed one of his closest people, his son-in-law, to take this task," he said. "We don't just see the glass half-empty, but also half-full. We see the commitment by President-elect Trump to intervene as early as possible and spend political capital to resolve this issue."
The comments are surprising because Trump, who will be inaugurated as America's 45th president on Friday, is widely seen as favouring the Israelis. He is controversially considering moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the divided city of Jerusalem, a move which critics believe would make a two-state solution practically impossible.
According to a report last night on Israel's Channel 10, Trump will meet with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu in the first week of February.
In an interview with the British MP Michael Gove for The Times, and Germany's Bild newspaper, Trump praised Kushner, who is Ivanka Trump's husband.
"You know what, Jared is such a good kid, and he'll make a deal with Israel that no one else can," Trump said. "He's a natural, he's a great deal, he's a natural – you know what I was talking about, natural – he's a natural deal-maker. Everyone likes him."
Kushner has no previous diplomatic experience. But he is said to have directed Trump's foreign policies throughout the presidential campaign and the current transition with President Obama's administration.
According to the JP, Kushner was the "primary drafter" of Trump's speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March, which went down well with the audience.
Last month, the Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said: "What we know: he's a really tough, smart guy, and we hope he will bring new energy to our region."
The veteral Middle East diplomat Dennis Ross, who served under the George H. W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations told the JP: "He clearly is someone who has a sense of Jewish identity, and he is someone who has a genuine attachment to Israel and understanding of the importance of the US-Israel relationship. People I know who know him describe him as smart, as someone who will clearly learn what he needs to learn, and will approach things thoughtfully, carefully, even analytically. So those would all be descriptors that I would hope would be accurate and emblematic of how he'll approach his responsibilities helping the new president."
Kushner and his wife are Orthodox Jews who converted upon their marriage in 2009.
In his interview published yesterday, Trump declined to comment on whether he would indeed move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. But he reiterated his criticism of the outgoing US administration for refusing to veto a UN resolution last month condemning Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law.
"The Palestinians are given so much – even though it's not legally binding, it's psychologically binding, and it makes it much tougher for me to negotiate," the president-elect said. "You understand that? Because people are giving away chips, they're giving away all these chips."
Kushner has retained a law firm to navigate him through potential legal obstacles in the way of him working for his father-in-law, including a federal anti-nepotism law which states that "a public official may not appoint, employ, promote, advance or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official."
His legal counsel, WilmerHale, concluded last month that precedent had been set by Hillary Clinton, who won a court case in the 1990s in her fight to chair a national task force on health care reform for her husband, the then president Bill Clinton. That case found that the law bans appointments to agencies and departments, but not within the White House itself.
