Jared Kushner suggests Israel take in Gazans, but warns against Palestinian state

Palestinian state would be ‘super bad’ idea, says former White House advisor Jared Kushner, suggesting that Israel take in Gaza civilians and clear out Rafah.

By World Israel News Staff

Former White House senior advisor Jared Kushner suggested Israel could take in Gazans, at least for the duration of the current war with Hamas, thus giving the IDF a free hand in operating in the Gaza Strip.

Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald Trump, spoke at an event hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative on February 15th.

In his comments at the event, which were published Wednesday, Kushner told Middle East Initiative Faculty Chair and Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance Tarek Masoud that Israel should evacuate Gaza civilians from the Rafah area, enabling the IDF to eliminate Hamas forces in the border city.

“You want to get as many civilians out of Rafah as possible. I think that you want to try to clear that out,” Kushner said.

“With diplomacy maybe you get them into Egypt, I know that that’s been refused, but with the right diplomacy I think it would be possible.”

Should attempts to gain Egyptian cooperation continue to fail, Kushner continued, Israel could clear an area for Gazans in southern Israel.

“But in addition to that the thing that I would do if I was Israel is bulldoze something in the Negev. I would try to move people in there.”

“I know that won’t be the most popular thing to do, but I think that’s a better option to do so that you can go in and finish the job.”

When asked whether Gazans should be resettled in the Gaza Strip, Kushner was ambivalent.

“Maybe, but I’m not sure there’s much left of Gaza at this point.”

“Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable,” Kushner continued.

“If people would focus on kind of building up livelihoods, 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, but I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”

The businessman and former White House aide warned Israel not to bow to pressure to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state at this juncture, saying that given the circumstances, it would be a “super bad idea.”

“Proactively recognizing a Palestinian state would essentially be rewarding an act of terror that was perpetrated on Israel, and so I think that’s a super bad idea in that regard.”