Cornwall hotel owner tells how he played a role in paving the way for peace in the Middle East
THE owner of a hotel who refused a government contact to house migrants has told how he unwittingly played a role in paving the way for peace in the Middle East through his friendship with the late Charlie Kirk.
John Mappin, of the Camelot Castle hotel in Cornwall, told Bev Turner during The Late Show Live on GB News: “We found what Charlie was doing very, very exciting, and we ended up introducing Charlie to the UK. We had set up a tour for him for the UK, but he had it so well organised that we ended up actually not being in England when he came over to the UK.
“We had a telephone call from him to say, ‘John, I really, really want you to meet Erika, and we would love for you to come to Jerusalem with us’ and I’d not been to Jerusalem before. So we arrived in late March in Jerusalem, and it was just at the point where a lot of the negotiations in relation to the Abraham Accords were sort of mid process.
“And this extraordinary tale began, actually at the King David Hotel. I think it was on the evening of the 16th of March, as I recall, and we were sitting down and we were brainstorming all the various different ways that you know peace in the Middle East could be achieved, and discussing the various things that were possible or not possible might, what might work, what might not work.
“It was interesting today that Erika, if you remember Beverly, said that Charlie has this ability, or had this ability, to think out of the box. And as we were discussing what was occurring, the issue of the sovereignty of the Golan Heights came up.
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“The Golan Heights is an area of land that has been, or had been disputed for, I think, 80 years between the various different parties in the Middle East, and it was something that we knew was a complete impasse. And at some point in the conversation, Charlie just sort of in a way that was completely out of the box, he said, ‘well, why don’t we just announce the sovereignty of the Golan Heights?’
He added: ‘He said, ‘you’ll never going to believe this. I am flying to the Golan Heights tomorrow with an officer from the IDF’. And he said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to discuss it’.
“And the next day, he flew to the Golan Heights, and he then called Jared Kushner, who was working at that time as part of the Trump administration, and he said, ‘Jared, listen, I’m at the Golan Heights. What if we just announce that the Golan Heights are sovereign?’
Jared said, ‘well, of course, that’s a great idea. But would you mind if you speak to the President about it?’ So literally, he walked the phone through to the Oval Office and spoke to the President and said, ‘listen, I’m at the Golan Heights. It’s Charlie Kirk here, and Charlie, how are you?’ And so and so forth. It was a very relaxed conversation.
‘I’m at the Golan Heights. We should just take that piece off the table. Let’s just announce the sovereignty of the Golan Heights and the president apparently said, ‘well, I’ll think about it anyway’.
Charlie flew back from the Golan Heights, and that night, we discussed it over dinner then he said, ‘well, I think the idea was received favourably’, and we were very excited. And of course, we were having a wonderful time in Jerusalem, and it was just one of those conversations.”
