21 June 2018•Update: 21 June 2018
By Ahmed Salouma, Hussein Qabani and Mohamed al-Bashir
CAIRO
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday discussed means of reactivating the stalled Palestine-Israel peace process with two high-level White House officials.
Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, top advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump, arrived in Cairo on Thursday morning after making earlier stops in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Thursday’s meeting in Cairo was also attended by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukry and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.
At the meeting, al-Sisi stressed his administration’s desire to deepen its relations with Washington, according to a subsequent statement released by al-Sisi’s office.
“Egypt supports international efforts to reach a just and permanent [Palestine-Israel] settlement… based on pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state,” the statement quotes al-Sisi as saying.
The two sides also reportedly discussed Egyptian efforts to achieve reconciliation between Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, along with recent Egyptian measures aimed at easing the suffering of the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Kushner, for his part, reportedly briefed his Egyptian interlocutors on the U.S. administration’s efforts to push the Palestine-Israel peace process forward.
Peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel stalled in 2014 due to the latter’s refusal to stop building illegal settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.
