On Monday, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s Orthodox Jewish son-in-law and special advisor, participated in a tree-planting ceremony in the Grove of Nations in Jerusalem where he was joined by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in planting 18 olive trees.
“It turns out Jerusalem is not the cause of the problem — it is the core of the solution,” Kushner said at the ceremony, explaining that, contrary to many prevailing opinions, it was the president’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital that led to the unprecedented wave of peace washing over the region.
Kushner, who noted that he is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, said that he hopes that the recent peace agreements will continue to bear fruit for the region.
“The peace agreements that we have made are planted seeds that will sustain life and bear fruit if tended to correctly,” he said.
In 2017, President Trump was strongly warned that recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would set off an explosion in the Middle East,” Kushner said at the ceremony honoring his peace efforts.
“As it turned out, there has been an explosion, just not the kind of explosion the experts thought might happen. President Trump’s bold decisions led to an explosion of peace,” “Some have used the cause of Jerusalem to divide; Jerusalem remains proudly open,” Kushner said, emphasizing that the Abraham Accords have allowed Jerusalem to move towards becoming a House of Prayer for All Nations.
“Over the last four months, we’ve now achieved four peace agreements and thanks to four years of hard work, I do think the benefits of that will be felt for years to come,” Kushner said.
The Grove of Nations is found in the Jerusalem Forest and makes up a part of the Olive Tree Route, an initiative led by UNESCO and the Council of Europe to establish an Olive Tree Route around the entire Mediterranean basin expressing the common desire for peace and co-existence.