Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund committed $2 billion to the American businessman and investor who served as a senior advisor to his father-in-law, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, agreeing to allow investment in Israeli firms for the first time, Wall Street Journal revealed.
Jared Kushner’s new private-equity fund plans to invest millions of dollars of Saudi Arabia’s money in Israeli startups, according to people familiar with the investment plan, in a sign of warming ties between two historic rivals.
Affinity Partners, which has raised more than $3 billion, including a $2 billion commitment from the kingdom’s sovereign-wealth fund, has already selected the first two Israeli firms to invest in, these people said.
Kushner's Affinity Partners has already selected the first two Israeli firms to invest in, the sources said, in what would be the first known case of money from the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund – the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) – being directed to Israel.
The WSJ said Affinity Partners investment in Israel could help lay the groundwork for a normalisation pact between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which currently have no diplomatic relations.
While in the White House, Kushner helped negotiate a series of normalisation agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.
The move came after the Saudi crown prince signalled that he was in favour of closer relations between Israel and other Arab nations.
In a column published in the WSJ in March last year, Kushner wrote that normalisation between Saudi Arabia and Israel was “in sight”, proclaiming that “we are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict”.
Kushner was the Saudi crown prince’s primary defender inside the White House following the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed by Saudi agents inside the kingdom's Istanbul consulate in 2018.
