Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has offered his own solution to the mass bloodshed and displacement in Gaza: some good, old-fashioned real estate development.
During an interview with Tarek Masoud, the faculty chair of Harvard’s Middle East Initiative, Kushner proposed moving Palestinians to Israel’s arid desert region to “clean up” Gaza’s “valuable” waterfront.
“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable to—if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner said, without clarifying who exactly would profit off such a project. He added that the area could’ve had great potential if “all the money” in Gaza had gone into “education and innovation,” instead of its tunnel network and munitions.
Kushner’s statement comes on the heels of warnings from the United Nations that the people of Gaza are facing an “imminent famine” as Israel continues its offensive.
Kushner suggested displacing the remaining Palestinians from the “valuable” waterfront, and dropping them in the Negev desert.
“I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there, I know that that won’t be the popular thing to do, but I think that that’s a better option to do, so that you can go in and finish the job,” he said. The Jewish Virtual Library describes the Negev as “oppressively hot” and “filled more with dirt, rocks and canyons, which are no less forbidding” than sand dunes.
When asked about concerns that Palestinians would be prohibited from returning to Gaza, Kushner said, “I am not sure there’s much left of Gaza at this point.”
Kushner clarified that he didn’t know if Israeli officials were seriously considering displacing Palestinians to the Negev.
“I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now, and I’m looking at the situation and I’m thinking: what would I do if I was there?” Kushner said.
When asked if Israel should allow a Palestinian state, Kushner said it was a “super bad idea” and would “essentially be rewarding an act of terror.”
