Jared Kushner, the man entrusted by the president of the United States with reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, admitted this week that he had no idea how to do it.

“Everyone finds an issue” that blocks progress, the Trump son-in-law and senior White House adviser complained in a closed-door meeting with a group of congressional interns July 31. He suggested that instead, “let’s focus on, how do you come up with a conclusion to the situation." True, there are those who specialize in finding “issues,” but the people undermining the solution to the “situation” are those who invent problems where none exist. Thousands of words have been written about the diplomatic implications of the Temple Mount metal detector problem invented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (the detectors were placed at the site after the July 14 attack on Israeli police officers). People say that once bitten, twice shy. Netanyahu is among those who once bitten rushes into the lion’s den — or, in this case, East Jerusalem. Unfortunately for him and for us, there is no trained, experienced handler to save him and us from this trouble.

The newbie negotiator told the interns that he had read enough books and did not require a history lesson on the conflict. Kushner would be well advised to add to his reading list the record of a July 26 Knesset debate, which would instruct him on another “issue” Netanyahu is inventing under his very nose. If Kushner did not fall asleep during the lesson on the role of Jerusalem in the Israeli-Palestinian, Jewish-Muslim conflict, then after reading the record he should either ask his father-in-law for permission to twist Netanyahu’s arm or hand Trump back the peace mandate. If anyone needed additional proof that Netanyahu and his friends had put the kibosh on the 1993 Oslo Accord on Israeli-Palestinian peace, the proposed legislation approved in a preliminary vote at the end of that Knesset debate can serve as the epitaph on the tombstone of that agreement.

Following are excerpts from the Knesset debate that preceded the vote at a first reading (the proposal would need extra readings and proceedings before being adopted) on an amendment to the Basic Law on Jerusalem. The amendment raises the majority required to approve relinquishing parts of Jerusalem to Palestinian control from 61 Knesset members, out of 120, to a special two-thirds (80) majority. Zeev Elkin, the minister in charge of Jerusalem affairs, said, “This law is designed to strengthen the status of a unified Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to make it harder in the future for any government to undermine that unification, God forbid, and to hand over parts of the city to foreign sovereignty.” Elkin then turned to the Arab members of the legislature, who had warned that the bill would deal a deadly blow to prospects of resolving the dispute over the city that both sides claim as their capital, and of a resolution to the overall conflict. “You have reason to fear this bill and not to want it,” the minister said in a clear attempt to provoke the representatives of the Arab minority. “And that is exactly the reason we support it.”