Jared Kushner, former President Trump’s son-in-law, said the Palestinian people’s lives could be greatly improved if they focused on building “valuable” infrastructure instead of terrorist tunnels.
Kushner made the statement in an interview with the Harvard Kennedy School published by the Middle East Initiative earlier this month. The interview focused on the future for Gaza and Palestinians after the end of Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas
“Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner said. “If you think about all the money that’s gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done?”
“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner added. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”
Kushner clarified and defended his comments on Tuesday after a wave of criticism accusing him of being callous toward the Palestinians’ situation.
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“I expressed my dismay that the Palestinian people have watched their leaders squander decades of Western aid on tunnels and weapons rather than on improving their lives,” he wrote.
“I stand by this and believe the Palestinian people’s lives will improve ONLY when the international community and their citizenry start demanding accountability from their leadership,” he added.
Kushner’s comments come as Israel is poised to deal the final blow against Hamas in Gaza with an invasion of the border town of Rafah. President Biden’s administration has pushed against those plans, however, saying the cost in civilian lives would be too great.
