Considering the fragile “ceasefire” that has been mediated by Donald Trump, numerous observers have begun discussing the prospect of additional Muslim-majority states joining the so-called Abraham Accords. This is in addition to the four that had joined in 2020: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan (although Sudan’s agreement remains largely informal at this stage).

Both Trump and Netanyahu have openly reiterated, in recent statements, the possibility of extending the framework of the Accords to include further new participants in the near future.

As we had noted in a recent analysis, an ironic dimension of these agreements lies in the fact that, while Palestinian statehood remains distant, the Trump-brokered diplomatic thaw has already led several Muslim-majority countries to implicitly accept Israel’s existence and, to some extent, its sovereignty.

The most consequential potential signatory would be Saudi Arabia, often regarded by many as an informal center of influence within the Muslim – and particularly the Sunni – world, owing to its assumed role as custodian of Islam’s two holiest sites.

Yet, many analysts argue that Riyadh would be unwilling to extend formal recognition to Israel before the establishment of a Palestinian state, a stance that is consistent with its historical policy and the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002.

However, this view may overlook more recent developments: economic and logistical alliances between Israel and Saudi Arabia have been quietly expanding, even in the absence of official diplomatic ties. The most prominent architect of this behind-the-scenes engagement has been Jared Kushner.

Kushner the Father

Jared Kushner was born into a Jewish family. He is the son of Charles Kushner, a prominent attorney-turned-real-estate-developer from New Jersey who became the subject of a high-profile criminal case. In 2005, Charles Kushner was convicted of tax evasion, illegal campaign donations, and witness tampering, charges that stemmed from a federal investigation into his company’s political contributions and business practices. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison and was later pardoned by President Trump in December 2020.

Charles Kushner, who was once a major donor to the Democratic Party, later shifted his political alignment toward the Republican Party. Following his son Jared Kushner’s close involvement in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Kushner family became key supporters of Trump’s candidacy and subsequent administration. Despite his earlier Democratic affiliations, Charles maintained a long-standing personal relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – a relationship that predated Trump’s presidency. This relationship continued even though Netanyahu’s Likud Party is ideologically distant from the U.S. Democratic Party, underscoring the Kushner family’s enduring ties to Israel, ties which transcend partisan boundaries, as if Jewish identity politics trump all sorts of ideological quarrels. The Guardian has reported:

Kushner’s family had maintained close links with Netanyahu for decades, mainly through his father, Charles Kushner, who had been a major donor to pro-Israeli causes. The relationship was so close that Netanyahu once stayed at the Kushner family’s house in New Jersey, according to the New York Times.

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Kushner the Son-in-Law

Jared Kushner thus grew up in a family environment strongly rooted in Jewish identity, involving active engagement in Jewish community affairs and philanthropic causes. This milieu also included a consistent orientation toward support for the State of Israel.

Jared’s commitment to his Jewish faith was further reflected in his relationship with his future wife, Ivanka, Donald Trump’s daughter. In 2007, the two were introduced to one another by a mutual business associate at a networking lunch that brought together members of the New York real-estate community. Although the couple briefly separated due to religious differences, they reconciled after Ivanka decided to convert to Orthodox Judaism under the guidance of Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, finalizing the conversion in 2009. The same year, the couple became engaged and were married in a traditional Jewish ceremony in Bedminster, New Jersey. Their children are raised Jewish.

So, how does Jared connect Saudi Arabia and Israel together? The answer is through his private-equity investment firm, Affinity Partners, founded in 2021. The firm, headquartered in Miami, was created to attract cross-regional investment from the Middle East, including funds from both Gulf states and Israeli companies. A 2025 report by Middle East Eye highlighted that state-level investments from Gulf sovereign wealth funds, particularly Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), have become a significant source of capital for Israeli companies in the years following the so-called Abraham Accords and through Affinity Partners. According to the report, some of these government-backed funds have indirect exposure to Israeli ventures linked to settlement construction and infrastructure projects in the occupied Palestinian territories:

An investment firm headed by Jared Kushner and backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates is the largest shareholder in an Israeli company which in turn holds shares in businesses accused by the United Nations of operating in illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

 

Affinity Partners has received several billion dollars in funding from the Gulf states’ sovereign wealth funds since it was launched by Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son in law and former Middle East advisor, in 2021.

 

In January, just weeks after securing further funding from the Qatari Investment Authority (QIA) and an Abu Dhabi-based investment firm, Affinity completed the purchase of a near-10 percent stake in Phoenix Financial.

 

Phoenix, formerly known as Phoenix Holdings, is an Israeli financial services group that offers insurance and asset management services, and holds shares in other Israeli companies in its own name and through a subsidiary, Phoenix Investment House.

 

An investigation by Middle East Eye has established that these include 11 public companies and one private company currently named in a database of businesses with links to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, compiled by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

 

[…]

 

Kushner, who is considered to be close to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was a key architect during Trump’s first term of the so-called Abraham Accords which established diplomatic ties between Israel and several Arab states including the UAE.

 

He has spoken openly of his support for, and desire to invest in Israel, describing Affinity last year as “long-term bullish” on the country, and his hopes for a future normalisation deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

 

[…]

 

In a briefing provided to the committee last July, details of which were cited by the committee in related letters and documents, Affinity said that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund had committed to providing it with $2bn in funds between 2021 and 2026.

In light of these developments, it appears that despite Saudi Arabia’s public posture of restraint, often articulated by the combative Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in cautious or critical statements regarding normalization, the kingdom’s gradual integration into the so-called Abraham Accords framework may proceed even in the absence of tangible progress toward Palestinian sovereignty.

Through Jared Kushner’s firm Affinity Partners and its collaboration with the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the economic rationale for engagement with Israel has increasingly overshadowed political or ideological considerations.

In other words, under the banner of “national interest” and regional modernization, Saudi policy has prioritized strategic investment and economic connectivity over adherence to the traditional linkage between normalization and Palestinian statehood. Thus, Saudi Arabia’s formal accession to the so-called Abraham Accords has become less a question of principle and more one of timing and diplomatic choreography.

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A Kabbalistic Symbol?

The logo of Jared Kushner’s private-equity firm, Affinity Partners, offers an additional layer of symbolic interpretation that aligns with the firm’s broader geopolitical positioning:

Visually, the emblem resembles an “impossible triangle,” also known as the Penrose triangle, a figure consisting of three straight beams joined at right angles to form a continuous loop, creating an optical paradox that cannot exist in three-dimensional Euclidean space. In mathematical terms, the Penrose triangle is a topological illusion that represents continuity within contradiction: a closed structure generated by mutually inconsistent spatial relations.

From a symbolic or religious perspective, particularly within the Kabbalistic tradition of Judaism, the triangular form can evoke the dynamic balance among the three sefirot (“divine emanations” in the material world), chesed (kindness), gevurah (severity), and tiferet (harmony), that sustain “cosmic equilibrium.”

The interlocking design may be read as a visual metaphor for emanation and interdependence, reflecting the idea that each divine attribute exists only in relation to the others. At its central void or gap, one might discern an allusion to Ein Sof, the infinite and unknowable divine source that remains both absent and present at the core of existence.

When viewed alongside the firm’s role as an intermediary channeling Saudi state capital into Israeli ventures, the symbolism takes on an unsettling resonance: much like the Penrose triangle’s illusion of coherence amid structural impossibility, Affinity Partners appears to reconcile what was long deemed irreconcilable, not through diplomacy or ethics but through capital, transforming the historical divide between Saudi Arabia and Israel into a market equation, where economic interdependence acts as a substitute for political resolution.

In this sense, the “impossible triangle” may be less a symbol of harmony (the so-called Abraham Accords) and more a moral paradox rendered functional, a reminder that in the contemporary Middle East, what cannot be aligned politically can still be monetized, even if it translates into continued Palestinian death and misery (Jared himself, though, joined the billionaires club just a few weeks ago).

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