Jared Kushner Says Israel Should “Finish the Job” in Gaza So It Can Focus on Building Valuable “Waterfront Property”

In 2017, on the eve of his inauguration, Donald Trump made a bold and unintentionally hilarious prediction: His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was going to bring peace to the Middle East. “If [Jared] can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can,” Trump said, adding, “All my life, I’ve been hearing that’s the toughest deal to make, but I have a feeling Jared is going to do a great job.” Unfortunately, Jared did not do a great job, and failed to even come close to bringing peace to the region, despite reading “25 books” on the topic. Yet, he still apparently believes his insights on the matter are valuable, and recently offered Israel a big piece of advice: It should get rid of everyone in Gaza so it can focus on developing hot “waterfront property” on the strip.

Yes, in a February interview at Harvard that was posted online this month and uncovered by the Guardian on Tuesday, Kushner opined that the Gaza Strip could be “very valuable” from a real estate perspective, if Israel could forcibly remove everyone currently living there to develop “waterfront property.” Speaking to Harvard professor Tarek Masoud, 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.” Where does Kushner suggest these people go? Ivanka Trump’s husband explained that if he were in charge of Israel, his top priority would be removing the people living in Rafah—a Palestinian city in southern Gaza—and moving them into Egypt “with diplomacy.” And that wasn’t his only piece of advice: “In addition to that,” he said, “I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there…. I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.”

He repeated the idea later in the conversation—as well as the words “finish the job”—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.” Seemingly shocked by the suggestion, Masoud responded, “Is that something that they’re talking about in Israel? I mean, that’s the first I’ve really heard of somebody, aside from [Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi], suggesting that Gazans who are trying to flee the fighting could take refuge in the Negev. Are people in Israel seriously talking about that possibility?”

“I don’t know,” Kushner replied, literally shrugging his shoulders while discussing removing people from their homes in order to build some sweet condominiums.

“That would be something you’d try to work on?” Masoud asked.

“I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now,” Kushner replied. “And I’m looking at the situation and I’m just thinking, What would I do if I was there?”

Later, asked about concerns that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu wouldn’t allow Palestinians who leave Gaza to go back, Kushner, with an expression that suggested he’d never considered this before, responded: “Um…maybe,” adding, “I am not sure there is much left of Gaza at this point.”

Appearing on CNN after Kushner’s comments were reported, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin told Kaitlan Collins: “My initial reaction is sort of shock…by the sheer callousness and insensitivity at calling it ‘a little unfortunate,’ when 30,000 people have been killed, there was a terrorist attack that killed hundreds of Israelis, the entire region is inflamed, and Jared Kushner’s reaction is, ‘Oh, well, it’s a real shame we couldn’t put some condos here.’ But if you put that aside, what we see is a preview into what a Trump administration Israel policy would really look like, and Jared Kushner said the quiet part out loud: that he thinks we should ‘move the people out and clean it up.‘ And if that’s not exactly a call for forced displacement of 2 million Palestinians and ethnic cleanings in Gaza, it’s pretty close…and that is a really troubling prospect for an American administration.”