Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner has shared his thoughts regarding how to deal with the situation in Gaza. Photo / Getty
Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner has shared his thoughts regarding how to deal with the situation in Gaza. Photo / Getty
Gaza’s waterfront properties could be “very valuable”, Donald Trump’s son-in-law has said, as he suggested Israel rehouse displaced civilians in the desert.
Jared Kushner, a former property dealer who served alongside his wife Ivanka Trump as senior White House advisers to her father, also told an audience at Harvard University a Palestinian state would be “a super-bad idea”.
“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner said in a discussion chaired by Professor Tarek Masoud, faculty chairman of Harvard’s Middle East Initiative.
His comments emerged after an international early warning system set up by governments and NGOs determined half the population of Gaza was on the brink of famine.
The West has struggled to respond to the looming humanitarian catastrophe, with US and European efforts to airdrop aid criticised as inefficient by some international aid organisations.
Speaking at Harvard, Kushner said: “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
“I am not sure there is much left of Gaza at this point. If you think about even the construct, Gaza was not really a historical precedent. It was the result of a war,” he added.
“But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”
Kushner also criticised “all the money” that had gone into the Hamas-run territory being used for its weapons stockpile and underground tunnel network rather than education and innovation.
Destroyed buildings stand inside Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, on Tuesday, March 19, 2024. Photo / AP
‘I would try to move people to the Negev’
He suggested establishing a Palestinian state “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”.
A top priority for Israel, he said, should be moving civilians out of Rafah, and persuading Egypt to accept refugees “with diplomacy”.
In addition, he said the Jewish state should move displaced Gazans to the Negev desert in southern Israel.
“I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” he said. “I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.”
Masoud asked if the proposal was something he would “try to work on”. Kushner said: “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?’”
The 43-year-old was an unpaid senior adviser in his father-in-law’s White House, and played a key role in brokering Trump’s foreign policy approach in the Middle East.
While in the White House, he produced a 180-page Middle East peace plan that was three years in the making and included efforts to normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
US President Joe Biden (left) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden and Netanyahu spoke on Monday, March 18 in their first interaction in more than a month as the divide has grown between the allies over the food crisis in Gaza and the conduct of war. Photo / AP
It was endorsed by Netanyahu, but led the Palestinian Authority to cut ties with the US and Israel.
Kushner’s remarks at Harvard on March 8 may give some indication of how Trump will approach the Israel-Hamas war should he win back the presidency.
However, Kushner and his wife have both kept a distance from Trump’s 2024 campaign and have ruled out serving in a future Trump administration.
