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Trump's Jerusalem capital move could doom peace efforts

Washington - Jared Kushner, Trump's 36-year-old son-in-law, has been quietly working on the Israeli-Palestinian dossier for months

President Donald Trump's decision to break with decades of US policy and recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital could complicate the already daunting effort by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to hammer out a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, analysts say.
Middle East analysts said it may have the opposite effect.
"Why now?" asked Ilan Goldenberg, senior fellow and director of the Middle East Security Programme at the Centre for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.
"He's undermining his own peace efforts," Goldenberg said. "It makes very little sense to make it at this moment.
"The best case scenario is that it's just going to blow up Trump's peace efforts," he said. "The worst case scenario is you also have widespread protests, major riots."
Goldenberg said the move puts Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who calls for East Jerusalem as the capital of an eventual Palestinian state, and other Arab leaders in a tough position.
"It's hard to imagine Abbas or any of the Arab leaders being able to engage politically," he said.
Goldenberg said if Trump was really serious about promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace he would have made the status of Jerusalem part of a global peace package.
Jared Kushner, Trump's 36-year-old son-in-law, has been quietly working on the Israeli-Palestinian dossier for months but diplomatic sources said they do not expect any peace plan to be revealed until, at best, early 2018.
For Barbara Slavin of the Atlantic Council, Trump's Jerusalem move is "a confirmation that (the peace process) has always been an illusion."
"Kushner's peace efforts are a kind of fig leaf to give the Saudis so they could justify working more with Israel against Iran," Slavin said.
Since taking office, Trump and Kushner have been cultivating a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, and particularly the new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, as an ally against mutual foe Iran.
But Slavin warned that the Jerusalem move could have unintended consequences.
Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, was more sanguine.
Arab governments would have to "show concern" over the Jerusalem move, he said, "for reasons of public opinion."
"(But) it will not change the fundamentals of their relationship with Israel," he said.
A diplomat with knowledge of the region also said he did not think the Jerusalem move would prove to be too unsettling.
"There are tectonic changes in the region," said the diplomat who requested anonymity. "It's a new Middle East."