Jared Kushner suggests Israel ‘clean up’ Gaza’s ‘very valuable’ waterfront

Columbia, South Carolina: Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser charged with coming up with a Middle East peace plan, has praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s waterfront real estate, suggesting that Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the area.

“Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable, if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner said in an interview dated February 15, posted earlier this month on the YouTube channel of the Middle East Initiative, a program of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and reported first on Wednesday (AEDT) by The Guardian.

A Palestinian man walks on the beach by destroyed buildings in Gaza City during the November ceasefire.Credit: AP

“If you think about all the money that’s gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done?

“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner added. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”

Responding on X to “those dishonestly using selected parts” of his remarks to criticise him, Kushner posted a video of the entire interaction, saying he stood by his comments and believed “the Palestinian people’s lives will improve ONLY when the international community and their citizenry start demanding accountability from their leadership”.

About 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, as Israel looks to eliminate Hamas following the militant group’s deadly October 7 attack. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 70,000 wounded in the Gaza Strip since Israel’s war on Hamas began.

From left, then-president Donald Trump, his White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in 2017.Credit: Israeli Government Press Office

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to send a team of Israeli officials to Washington to discuss a prospective Rafah operation with Biden administration officials.

The agreement to hold such talks came as President Joe Biden and Netanyahu spoke on Monday, their first interaction in more than a month, as the divide has grown between the allies over the food crisis in Gaza and Israel’s conduct during the war. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the talks in the coming days were expected to involve military, intelligence and humanitarian experts.

In the interview last month, Kushner also suggested that getting civilians out of Rafah and potentially into Egypt, might be possible “with the right diplomacy”, and posited a plan for the Negev desert in southern Israel.

Additionally, Kushner suggested that he “would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” adding: “I know that won’t be the popular thing to do, but I think that’s a better option to do, so you can go in and finish the job.

Palestinians enjoy the day on the beach by the Mediterranean Sea during a heat wave in Gaza City before the Hamas-Israel war in June last year.Credit: AP

“I think Israel’s gone way more out of their way than a lot of other countries would, to try to protect civilians from casualties,” Kushner claimed.

The debate over the Israel-Hamas war has developed into a major theme of this year’s US presidential election, drawing dividing lines between Biden and Trump, as well as within their own parties.

Asked in an interview about Democrats’ growing criticism of Netanyahu over his handling of the war in Gaza, Trump charged that Jews who vote for Democrats “hate Israel” and hate “their religion”, igniting a firestorm of criticism from the White House and American Jewish leaders.

He doubled down on those remarks on Tuesday, telling reporters in Florida that “the Democrats have been very, very opposed to Jewish people”.

Palestinians dry their clothes after washing them with seawater at the beach in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, in November.Credit: AP

Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, meanwhile, gave a speech from the Senate floor calling Trump’s comments “utterly disgusting and a textbook example of the kind of antisemitism facing Jews”.

Kushner worked on a wide range of issues and policies in the Trump administration, including Middle East peace efforts. Noting that he was not interested in rejoining the White House if Trump – who last week became the presumptive GOP nominee – wins the 2024 presidential election, Kushner said last month that he was focused on his investment business and his living with his family in Florida out of the public eye.

He was back in the news this week, with The New York Times reporting he’s pursuing real estate deals in Serbia, as well as luxury real estate projects in Albania. The Times also reported that Kushner and other ex-Trump administration figures have set up investment firms and “secured billions of dollars from the Saudi government and hundreds of millions of dollars from other Middle Eastern nations”.

AP

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.