Jared Kushner tells interns 'let's not focus' on history when it comes to Middle East peace talks

Jared Kushner is done learning about the Middle East.

“We don’t want a history lesson,” Kushner told a room full of congressional interns in what was supposed to be an off-the-record lecture. “We’ve read enough books. Let’s focus on how do you come up with a conclusion to the situation.”

The senior adviser and Presidential son-in-law’s remarks on Monday focused on the difficulty of brokering peace between the Palestinians and Israel.

A partial recording of the nearly hour-long address was obtained and released by Wired magazine.

Kushner, in the published portion, describes how he was tasked to figure out a peace deal.

“So first of all, this is one of the ones I was asked to take on, and I did with this something that I do with every problem set you get,” the former real estate executive said.

His research into the topic showed him “not a whole lot has been accomplished over the last 40 or 50 years.”

After speaking with “a lot of people,” he’s determined “this is a very emotionally charged situation.”

What’s gotten under his skin, however, is people explaining hot points.

“Everyone finds an issue, that, ‘You have to understand what they did then’ and ‘You have to understand that they did this,’” he told the interns. “But how does that help us get peace? Let’s not focus on that.”

Kushner’s Middle East peace work is part of his grocery list of White House duties, which also includes streamlining government operations.

The former real estate executive toured Iraq in April, and ventured to the West Bank in June to meet with Palestinian Authority president Mahmous Abbas.

Kushner traveled in April to meet with U.S. officials in Iraq.

That meeting didn’t go well, however. Palestinian officials told the Haaretz newspaper Abbas was “greatly disappointed” by the meeting, held in the West Bank, and Kushner’s envoy “sounded like Netanyahu’s advisers and not like fair arbiters.”

But Kushner’s had more success working things out since them and no one has leaked to the media in the process, he said during the Capitol Hill lecture.

He pointed to a recent water deal between Israel, the Palestinians and Jordan.

“That was one thing that we achieved, which we were quite happy about — which is, you know, (a) small thing, but it’s actually a pretty big thing over there,” he told the room.

The other was negotiating security measures at a holy site where two Israeli police officers were recently killed.

He concludes by rhetorically asking what makes the Trump approach to a peace deal different.

“I don’t know,” Kushner said. “I’m sure everyone that’s tried this has been unique in some ways, but again we’re trying to follow very logically.”

Other portions of Kushner’s speech have trickled out, despite warnings not to breach the agreement.

Kushner said it was impossible for his father-in-law’s Presidential campaign couldn’t have colluded with Russia because it was too disorganized, Foreign Policy reported Monday.

“They thought we colluded, but we couldn’t even collude with our local offices,” Kushner said, the magazine reported from notes provided by a source.

Kushner, who met with several Russian officials during the campaign, privately testified before congressional committees last week over the encounters.