US President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner at the start of a meeting in Jerusalem, May 22, 2017. Photo: Kobi Gideon / GPO.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed unease with the senior Middle East peacemaking role assigned by US President Donald Trump to his son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to the forthcoming memoir by former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton.

As the administration’s lawyers moved on Thursday to block the publication of The Room Where It Happened — Bolton’s account of his 17 months in the White House before he was fired last September — several media outlets ran excerpts from the book that covered key foreign policy challenges, from China to Venezuela.

On Trump’s bid to secure the “deal of the century” between Israel and the Palestinians, Bolton recalled that Netanyahu had voiced concern to him about Kushner’s lack of diplomatic experience, given the prominent negotiating role he was taking on.

Netanyahu, according to Bolton, was “was dubious about assigning the task of bringing an end to the Israel-Palestinian conflict to Kushner, whose family Netanyahu had known for many years.”

“He was enough of a politician not to oppose the idea publicly, but like much of the world, he wondered why Kushner thought he would succeed where the likes of Kissinger had failed,” Bolton added.

A statement released by Netanyahu’s office on Thursday said the Israeli prime minister had “complete faith in Jared Kushner’s abilities and resolve, and rejects any description to the contrary.”

Kushner, it added, had “greatly contributed to furthering peace in the Middle East.”

“The US administration’s Middle East team, led by Kushner, successfully formulated President Trump’s principles into the Vision for Peace, offering the most realistic blueprint for peace in our region,” it went to say.

Kushner, the statement noted, also “contributed to President Trump’s historic decisions to recognize Jerusalem, move the US embassy to Israel’s capital and recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights” and “helped advance Israel’s relations with the Arab world.”

“With these accomplishments alone and under President Trump’s leadership, Kushner has already achieved what others before him did not accomplish,” it asserted. “We are confident that working together we can achieve the lasting and secure peace that we all desire.”

The revelation about Kushner was among several incidents described by Bolton that questioned both Trump’s integrity and knowledge of foreign policy.

According to Bolton, Trump sought help from Chinese President Xi Jinping to win the 2020 US election, emphasizing the “importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome,” and assuring him that the Beijing’s construction of internment camps in the Xinjiang region where more than 1 million Uighur Muslims are now incarcerated was the “right thing to do.”