Jared Kushner, former property dealer and senior foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump, has praised the potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested that Israel should remove civilians from the area while it “cleans up” the strip. In an interview at Harvard University, Kushner said that Gaza’s waterfront property could be “very valuable” if people focused on building up livelihoods, and lamented the fact that “all the money” that has gone into the territory’s tunnel network and munitions instead of education and innovation.
Kushner also suggested that Israel should move civilians from Gaza to the Negev desert in southern Israel, and reiterated the point, saying that opening up the Negev, creating a secure area, and moving civilians out would be the right move. The suggestion drew a startled response from his interviewer, Prof Tarek Masoud, who asked if people in Israel were seriously talking about allowing Gazans to flee to the Negev.
Kushner also made other comments about the Middle East, including the need for a normalisation deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and his views on the future of the Palestinians. He described the proposal of a Palestinian state as “a super bad idea” that would “essentially be rewarding an act of terror.”
