Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner criticized the government in Gaza for squandering decades of aid to build terror tunnels and purchase weapons rather than “building up livelihoods” for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the Associated Press reported.
In a February 15 interview Kushner gave at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government’s Middle East Initiative, the former Trump White House advisor who was instrumental in securing the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel and some Arab nations, noted that the government in Gaza could have built up the region’s “very valuable” waterfront if only it had used focused its spending “on building up livelihoods.”
He noted the money Hamas squandered to build its network of tunnels and purchase “all the munitions” and suggested that so much more could have been achieved if those funds had been spent on “education and innovation.”
Kushner described the current situation in Gaza as “unfortunate” and suggested that Israel should do its best “to move the people out and then clean it up.”
Unsurprisingly, the media misrepresented Kushner’s interview to claim that he was calling on Israel to clear out the Palestinians and build up a lavish waterfront in Gaza.
In a March 19 post on X, Kushner called out those who “dishonestly” used “selected parts” of his speech “to sensationalize” what he said.
Kushner retweeted the full 90-minute interview from the Kennedy School and argued that he was expressing his “dismay” that the Palestinians had to watch their leaders “squander decades of Western aid” to construct tunnels and buy weapons “rather than on improving their lives.”
Kushner said he stood by his words and insisted that the lives of the Palestinian people would only improve “when the international community and their citizenry start demanding accountability from their leadership.”
In his February 15 interview, Kushner also suggested that “with the right diplomacy” it might be possible to convince Egypt to temporarily take in the Palestinian civilians currently in Rafah. He also suggested a possible plan to move the civilians to southern Israel’s Negev desert.
