Former US President Donald Trump's advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner is founding an organization called the Abraham Accords Institute for Peace, to work on deepening the normalization agreements he helped strike between Israel and Arab countries.
Kushner was the main architect of the Abraham Accord between several Arab countries and Israel.
According to a statement, the institute will focus on increasing trade and tourism between Israel, Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan, and developing programs to foster people-to-people connections between the countries.
It will also "provide analysis of the benefits of normalization and the potential benefits additional Arab countries can receive if they join the Abraham Accords,” reported Axios.
The board is still being formed with talks underway to include representatives from both Morocco and Sudan, and it is expected to launch activities in 2022.
The founders also want to add more democrats and advisers from the region.
“In less than a year, this warm peace is melting decades of misunderstanding and hostility across the region. This is a peace among peoples as much as it is among nations. This will be the institute’s focus – to nurture and deepen these human connections.”
The statement and leaks in the US and Israeli media did not mention the peace agreements between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan.
Former White House envoy Avi Berkowitz is also founding the institute, along with Israeli-US businessman and Democratic donor Haim Saban, and three top officials from the region: the US and Bahraini ambassadors to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba and Abdulla al-Khalifa, and Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi.
The executive director will be Rob Greenway, the former top Middle East advisor on Trump's national security council.
The final weeks of the former administration witnessed the signing of peace and normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.
Observers regard those agreements as arguably Trump's biggest foreign policy achievement and the biggest breakthrough for relations between Israel and the Arab world for 25 years.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration said it wants to expand on the Accords and potentially include additional countries.
President Joe Biden spoke Tuesday with UAE Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed and said the normalization of relations between the UAE and Israel was of strategic importance to the US.
They discussed regional and global challenges, including Afghanistan, the nuclear and regional dimensions of the threat posed by Iran, as well as the common quest for de-escalation and peace in the Middle East, according to the White House.
President Biden and the Crown Prince agreed on the priority of working together to address conflicts.
