There is chaos in Gaza — people are starving, they’re being bombed and shot, and the US has so far been disgustingly passive about it all. We need positive ideas and new tactics to change the situation, so let’s get advice from…Donald Trump’s son-in-law? I admit, Jared Kushner is looking at Israel through a different lens.
His remarks at Harvard gave a hint of the kind of Middle East policy that could be pursued in the event that Trump returns to the White House, including a search for a normalisation deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,Kushner told his interviewer, the faculty chair of the Middle East Initiative, Prof Tarek Masoud. Kushner also lamentedall the moneythat had gone into the territory’s tunnel network and munitions instead of education and innovation.
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,Kushner said.But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.Masoud replied that there was “a lot to talk about there”.
Jesus. Exactly what you’d expect from a developer and slumlord — every piece of land is a property to be seized and exploited. Gaza is a chunk of ocean front without casinos and high rise hotels, let’s fix it!
He doesn’t seem to have put much thought into the people who live there. You know, the ones who had other things to do with their money than pay out exorbitant rents to a landlord.
Kushner also said he thinks Israel should move civilians from Gaza to the Negev desert in southern Israel.
He said that if he were in charge of Israel his number one priority would be getting civilians out of the southern city of Rafah, and that
with diplomacyit could be possible to get them into Egypt.
But in addition to that, 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.He reiterated the point a little later, saying:
I do think right now opening up the Negev, creating a secure area there, moving the civilians out, and then going in and finishing the job would be the right move.
Finish the job? Finish what job? The extermination of the Palestinians? Sure, just bulldoze a patch of desert and move them there. This is insane.
I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now,Kushner said.And I’m looking at the situation and I’m thinking: what would I do if I was there?
I’m thinking: why the hell was Jared Fucking Kushner, that incompetent hack, invited to Harvard to opine on Israel?
The rich really are devoid of compassion and humanity, aren’t they? They don’t see anyone else as people, just tools to be used and then discarded. It feels like Jared is too self absorbed or dumb to know that he’s not supposed to say the quiet stuff out loud.
This is exactly how Trump ran the US and how he will again if given the chance. His followers are too badly educated to understand their situation. But then, that was by design, wasn’t it?
Cthulhu, Jared Kushner is a braindead idiot.
This understates how clueless he is, but the English language does have some limitations.
So, how are you going to move 2.2 million people out of Gaza?
Gaza is the world’s largest open air prison.
Those people are already refugees, and they are in Gaza because they have no where else to go.
This is also just ethnic cleansing, clearly stated.
The vast majority of people in Gaza are already Palestinian refugees, driven out of Israel by the Israelis.
Israel has stated by words and actions since their founding in 1948, that they don’t want the Palestinians to live in Israel.
That is why there are refugee camps in all the countries around Israel; Jordan, Lebanon, Syria.
imagine being stupid or vile enough to be sitting on Miami Beach thinking, ‘All Palestine’s problems would be solved if they allowed developers to build up the waterfront, just like it worked out for the Tequesta people.’
That was my original thought, when the initial attack by Hamas happened.
I quickly learned that Egypt doesn’t want the Gaza Palestinians any more than Israel does.
.1. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood.
The current Egyptian government took power by the military deposing the Muslim Brotherhood.
The current Egyptian government doesn’t like the Muslim Brotherhood at all.
.2. Egypt has serious problem of its own that they are barely dealing with. The place is a slow moving disaster area right now, for many reasons, not least that they are running out of water. AFAICT, they use all the water from the Nile before it reaches the sea.
Which means, the 2.2 million people of Gaza are just another 2.2 million problems for them to deal with.
They don’t have the money or resources to deal with that many people coming in as refugees.
That just exchanges one prison for another.
So those 2.2 million people, half of which are children, go from Gaza to a refugee camp a hundred miles away in the middle of the Negev desert.
Gaza isn’t much but at least they have buildings, electricity, water, sewage treatment, a beach, and communications lines. Or they did before the Israeli invasion anyway.
It’s a huge step down to a tent camp in the Negev.
And then what?
The Palestinians sit there and breed for the next century or two?
Or they just somehow accidently end up dead? It’s for sure under those conditions a lot will just die from malnutrition, lack of health care, disease epidemics, and so on. Plus, the ones shot by the Israeli army during the inevitable prison riots and breakouts.
Kushner is sitting in Miami Beach right now, with several billion dollars in inherited wealth and a brain that doesn’t work very well. Those people, the Palestinians, aren’t real to him. They are just abstractions to move around on paper.
This is the same victim-blaming mentality that Republicans look at inner city poverty with. Like it’s their fault they’re not rich and thriving because they’ve been mismanaging the resources and opportunities that they don’t have.
A breath-taking reminder of the banality of evil.
The ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity are merely secondary to developing the area, it’s not like the primary intention is to exterminate the people in Gaza.
(See also pollution, deforestation, habitat destruction, climate disasters, etc. etc. etm.. They just want to make money.)
…if people would focus on building up livelihoods…
Whose livelihoods? My fist thought on seeing that quote was that no one running a hotel, casino or other tourist-attraction in Israeli-occupied Gaza would EVER even consider hiring actual Palestinians to work on premises. The chance of them being or becoming terrorist infiltrators is way too great, especially in the eyes of the business owners and any potential customer who has any clue what’s been going on in Gaza these past few decades. They’d bring in guest workers from Cambodia before they hire Palestinian locals.
If anything of note gets built on the Gaza coast, it’ll be by Israeli bidnessmen and settlers, and whoever they want to reward for their unstinting support. AFTER all those pesky underhumans who were there before are removed and herded out of sight.
The people of Gaza had been building up livelihoods, infrastructure etc. People ran businesses that provided the goods and services needed by over 2 million people. The hospitals that have been destroyed didn’t just magically appear out of nowhere.
raven: good news, with the famine and the bombing there’s soon going to be far fewer than 2 million Palestinians to ethnically cleanse!
Pay no attention to the corpses buried in the ruins.
“Kushner also lamented all the money that had gone into the territory’s tunnel network and munitions instead of education and innovation.”
Really? How about lamenting all the American taxpayers money that has funded Israel’s construction of Apartheid walls, illegal settlements, the bombing of Palestinian universities, schools and hospitals and the genocide of Palestinians. That money could pay for a lot of education and healthcare for Americans.
Um, has everyone forgotten that Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism in order to marry Kushner? Of course he thinks he speaks for the people of Israel, the man is entitlement and nepotism personified.
Im sure he has 2 billion reasons for pretending that Israel isn’t trying to genocide the Palestinians and colonize Gaza.
… why the hell was Jared Fucking Kushner, that incompetent hack, invited to Harvard to opine on Israel?
Hey, Jared F. Kushner created the famous Abraham Accords and thereby brought lasting peace to the Middle East.
It was on all the tv shows at the time – don’t you even follow the news??!?
“why the hell was Jared Fucking Kushner, that incompetent hack, invited to Harvard to opine on Israel?” The answer is obvious – to say exactly what he said.
Because Harvard is the Ivy League version of the illness that the New York Times is in journalism.
@15 Also money.
The rich are incapable of empathy because most of the time they don’t need it. They never have to worry about losing their jobs, or being thrown out of their home by their arsehole landlord.
Pierce @12, heh. Good one!
(Seriously)
Kushner was in a conversation series at Harvard on the Middle East with the guests having many different viewpoints. I almost wonder whether they gave him the rope they did so as to display his undisguised inhumane views. Showing Kushner’s views is important because he has wielded significant power when his father-in-law was president and may well do so again.
https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/announcing-middle-east-dialogues