Sean Spicer ‘Not Aware’ of Tense Kushner Abbas Meeting on Israel, Middle East Peace

The White House press secretary said during a Monday press briefing he was “not aware” of reports that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, had a fractious meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday focused on the steps needed to restart Middle East peace talks frozen since April 2014, before the outbreak of the seven-week Gaza war. It also touched on the issue of the Palestinians making “martyr” payments to families of those convicted of attacks against Israelis.

Kushner’s team was angered by Abbas’s failure to condemn the killing of an Israeli border policewoman two weeks ago by three Palestinians, in Jerusalem’s Old City during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, according to the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat newspaper.

 

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