Jared Kushner has spent eight months as his father-in-law’s point person in the Middle East, relying primarily on one envoy, former Trump Organization lawyer Jason Greenblatt, to do the diplomatic heavy lifting in the region, Politico reports.
But just over a month ago, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster held a meeting in his West Wing office with Greenblatt to discuss some changes to how the administration would conduct its Israel strategy going forward – including more input from the National Security Council.
In the meeting – also attended by National Security Council officials Ricky Waddell, Michael Anton and Victoria Coates – the group discussed moving Coates, a former policy adviser to Senator Ted Cruz, to work full-time under Greenblatt.
Greenblatt and David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, had already pitched the idea privately to Coates. By bringing on Coates, Greenblatt would get a senior point of contact on the NSC who would be fully devoted to his project. McMaster, too, was pleased with the arrangement: it helped integrate what Greenblatt and Kushner had been doing with his NSC desk.
The group saw it as a win-win-win, and the move was quickly finalized. Coates, an art historian, and a longtime Republican foreign policy adviser, was promoted to senior director of international negotiations and moved offices to sit with Greenblatt’s team in the Old Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House.
The move, White House officials, and outside advisers said, underscored the administration’s commitment to brokering a Middle East peace deal, even amid recent setbacks in the region. And it showed the unorthodox administration giving a bigger partnership role in the region to the NSC — the traditional forum where foreign policy decisions are brokered.
“Renewed U.S. engagement with our Middle East allies is welcome and badly needed,” said Josh Block, president, and CEO of The Israel Project, a non-partisan educational organization. “The task requires someone in the White House who can manage the many diverse levels of the bilateral relationship, and the decision to move Victoria Coates to the center of the portfolio is a signal that these issues will get the attention and seriousness they need.”
Last month’s crisis at the Temple Mount, where two Israeli police officers were shot by Arab Israeli citizens at the holy site in Jerusalem, was seen as a major setback to any peace deal, especially to U.S. efforts to get the Israelis working more closely with the Palestinians. In reaction to the Israeli government’s decision to install metal detectors at the holy site following the shooting, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, froze contacts with Israel.
Israel finally agreed to remove the metal detectors after a series of high-level discussions and a trip by Greenblatt to the region, just as violent protests erupted and the situation was escalating. Coates joined the American team just as the crisis was erupting, and helped to provide grounding, perspective and some history with the players involved, people involved in the process said.
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