Arab foreign ministers back US meditation in Israel-Palestine conflict

The Palestinian, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers said they would back US peace efforts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during a meeting in Cairo on Saturday.

Washington announced last week that it would send a US delegation of top envoys Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and deputy national security advisor Dina Powell to the Middle East to discuss peace talks.

The trip will include meetings with leaders from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Jordan, and Egypt.

The Arab foreign ministers said in a joint statement that they "appreciated the American role to achieve peace" between the Israelis and Palestinians.

"[We] look forward to the US administration intensifying its efforts in the coming period," it added.

Jared Kushner, who has little experience of international diplomacy, was appointed earlier this year to restart Israeli-Palestinians negotiations, which have been frozen since talks collapsed in 2014.

Kushner's introduction to Middle East peace-making got off to a rocky start during diplomatic efforts in June, with Palestinian officials saying his US delegation sounded like "Netanyahu's advisers".

US President Donald Trump visited Israel and the occupied West Bank in May and has repeatedly referred to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the "ultimate deal".

In February, however, Trump appeared to break with decades of US foreign policy after saying peace between Israel and the Palestinians may not come in the form of a two-state solution.

Despite providing unprecedented military, financial and political support for Israel, successive US governments, both Republican and Democrat, have backed a two-state solution.

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II.