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(A7) Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former US President Donald Trump who advised him on the Middle East during his time in office, suggested that Gazans should be moved to the Negev in order to allow the IDF to complete its military campaign against Hamas.
The comments, quoted by The Hill, were made last month during a conversation Kushner had with Harvard’s Middle East Initiative (MEI) faculty chair Tarek Masoud, but are only coming into light now.
“So, what I would do right now if I was Israel is I would try to say, ‘Number one, you wanna get as many civilians out of Rafah as possible,’” Kushner said.
“I think that you wanna try to clear that out,” Kushner added. “I know that with diplomacy, maybe … get them into Egypt, I know that that’s been refused, but … the right diplomacy, I think it would be possible. But, in addition to that, the thing that I would try to do if I was Israel right now is, I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there.”
Masoud questioned Kushner on the idea of moving Gazans to the Negev, asking him if “that would be something you would try to work on?”
“I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now. And I’m, you know, I’m looking at the situation and I’m just thinking what would I do, if I was there,” Kushner replied.
He opined that he thinks Gaza’s waterfront property “could be very valuable … if people would focus on kind of building up, you know, livelihoods,” instead of spending money on tunnels or munitions.
“And so, I think that, it’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there,” continued Kushner.
He also stated his opposition to a Palestinian state, saying that he thinks “proactively recognizing a Palestinian state would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”, adding that it is “a super bad idea in that regard.”
Kushner was a key figure in negotiating normalization deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, known as the Abraham Accords. He and his deputy, Avi Berkowitz, were nominated in 2021 for the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in negotiating the deals.
Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have both indicated they would decline an invitation to return to the White House if Trump is reelected in November.
