What Jared Kushner brings to the negotiating table in the Middle East

Jared Kushner is back.

The president’s son-in-law — and former chief adviser — had said he wasn’t planning to join the administration for a second time.

He successfully returned to the private sector and was raking in millions in foreign investments from ties nurtured during his first stint at the White House.

But then President Trump drafted him back to help secure a ceasefire in Gaza.

“We called in Jared,” Trump told the Israeli parliament last week, recounting efforts to reach a deal. “We need that brain on occasion. We gotta get Jared in here.”

Trump sent Kushner back to the Middle East this week, along with special envoy Steve Witkoff, to help secure the ceasefire after a weekend of deadly violence threatened the deal.

At a press conference on Tuesday in Israel, Kushner downplayed the fighting as expected behavior.

“A lot of people are getting a little hysterical about different incursions one way or the other,” Kushner said, standing alongside Witkoff and Vice President Vance. “But what we’re seeing is that things are going in accordance. Both sides are transitioning from two years of very intense warfare to now a peacetime posture.”

Kushner, Vance and Witkoff are also in Israel to continue implementation of Phase 2 of the peace deal, which includes establishing lines of communication to reduce tensions and avoid violations of the ceasefire as well as improve systems to get more aid into Gaza.

Kushner’s high-profile involvement has raised ethical questions because of his deep business ties in the region.

During the first Trump administration, Kushner helped broker the historic Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries.

Several of the foreign governments in the region have since invested billions in an investment firm, Affinity Partners, which Kushner launched after leaving the administration.

Daniel Shapiro, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, said it’s fair to ask whether Kushner should be doing diplomacy in countries with which he’s also doing business.

“There are reasonable questions about the ethical and conflict of interest concerns that would be associated with people doing business with governments that they are also doing diplomacy with,” said Shapiro, who is now a fellow at the Atlantic Council a nonpartisan think tank.

But Shapiro, as have others who worked in Democratic administrations, have also given Kushner a lot of credit, acknowledging those same relationships helped him secure this peace agreement.

“I don’t think there’s any question that Jared Kushner’s involvement in that critical phase after that strike [by Israel] in Doha, given the relationships he has and given the experiences he had working with these governments previously, helped produce a result fairly quickly that brought about the good outcome,” he said.

Shapiro added that — especially in the Gulf countries — there are few lines between political, business and family relationships.

So someone like Kushner, who has been a partner before, can return to the negotiation table with built-in trust and understanding.

The White House dismisses any ethics criticism.

A senior administration official who was not authorized to discuss the negotiations told NPR that Kushner was critical to finalizing the deal, fostering relationships built through his work on the Abraham Accords.

“Special Envoy Wyckoff and the President were very grateful for his help, given his really deep understanding of the region and relationships,” the official said. “Steve would frequently reach out to him for input. They would bounce ideas off each other.”

The official dismissed the criticism as largely coming from those who oppose anything the president does.

Kushner calls the business ties he has in the region an asset, as he told CBS’s 60 Minutes over the weekend.

“What people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world,” he said. “If Steve and I didn’t have these deep relationships, the deal that we were able to help get done, that freed these hostages, would not have occurred.”