Jared Kushner’s Gaza ‘Master Plan’ Widely Mocked Amid Glaring Ethical Concerns

Screenshot via SkyNews

Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East advisor, was roundly mocked this week after he presented his “master plan” for redeveloping Gaza, which included slides of a futuristic Gaza waterfront complete with 180 towers in a “coastal tourism” zone.

Kushner detailed his vision for Gaza while speaking in Davos, Switzerland, on behalf of Trump’s highly controversial “Board of Peace,” which includes several authoritarian leaders, including Vladimir Putin. Kushner’s ongoing unofficial role in the Trump administration has led to widespread ethical concerns as he also leads a private equity firm funded by billions of dollars from foreign countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

“We’ve developed ways to redevelop Gaza. Gaza, as President Trump’s been saying, has amazing potential. And this is for the people of Gaza, and we’ve developed it into zones,” Kushner said in his speech, adding:

In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, “Let’s build a free zone, and then we have a Hamas zone.” And then we said, “You know what? Let’s just plan for catastrophic success.” We, Hamas, signed a deal to demilitarize. That is what we are going to enforce. People ask us what our Plan B is. We do not have a Plan B.

We have a plan. We signed an agreement. We are all committed to making that agreement work. There’s a master plan. We’ll be doing it in phasing. In the Middle East, they build cities like this in, you know, two, three million people. They build this in three years, and so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen. Rothel will start with—this will show a lot of workforce housing. We think this could be done in two or three years. We’ve already started removing the rubble and doing some of the demolition.

And then New Gaza. It could be a hope, it could be a destination, have a lot of industry, and really be a place that the people there can thrive, have great employment. Once this starts going, we think there should be 100 percent full employment and opportunity for everybody there. And we have a lot of data on what can be, but we think that this really gives the Gazan people an opportunity to live their aspirations. But it all starts with security, and it all starts with governance.

The Financial Times’ Gillian Tett reported on Kushner’s remarks for the BBC and said, “It was one of the weirdest announcements I think has ever happened” and added it led to “bafflement” as reporters and policy makers tried to understand the details.

The Economist’s Anshel Pfeffer added, “In Davos Jared Kushner’s Gaza is going to have an airport and Dubai-style skyline. In the real world, on the ground, deep in Gaza the IDF is building new permanent mega-outposts (photo from yesterday) with water and sewage pipelines. Which vision of Gaza will become reality?”

The Citizens for Ethics watchdog group reacted to the announcement, writing, “Jared Kushner is presenting plans to the Board of Peace about plans that involve “coastal tourism,” meanwhile actively running an investment firm with billions in investments from Middle Eastern countries. That’s a huge ethics problem.”

Other responses (filtering out the many, many reactions with profanity) to Kushner’s plan ranged from everything to outright mockery to accusations of colonialism and ethnic cleansing of the Gazan people. Below are some additional replies:

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