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Jared Kushner touted the “amazing investment opportunities” in Gaza and said the shattered city of Rafah could be rebuilt in two to three years, as he set out a $30bn vision for rebuilding the devastated Palestinian enclave.
Speaking in Davos, Kushner — US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and one of his key Middle East advisers — presented slides with computer-generated images of the Palestinian territory that echoed a previous, much-derided plan for a “Gaza Riviera”, envisaging a “New Gaza” being rebuilt in several phases.
“In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of ‘Let’s build a free zone [within Gaza] and then we have a Hamas zone’. And then we said: ‘Let’s just plan for catastrophic success’,” Kushner said at an event to mark the unveiling of Trump’s “Board of Peace”.
“Hamas signed a deal to demilitarise. That is what we are going to enforce. People ask us what our plan B is. We do not have a plan B . . . There’s a master plan; we’ll be doing it in phases,” said Kushner.
Trump last year brokered a fragile ceasefire to halt the two-year war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the deadliest in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It reduced much of Gaza to rubble and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
But while Trump secured a halt to the fighting and the return of the last living Israeli hostages held by Hamas, there has so far been little progress on the next phase of his plan, which involves disarming Hamas, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the rebuilding of the strip.
It remains unclear who will contribute troops to an international stabilisation force, the deployment of which is considered crucial to moving to the next stage.
Kushner acknowledged that 90,000 tonnes of munitions had been dropped on Gaza during the war, and that the fighting had left 60mn tonnes of rubble in the territory. But he said rubble clearance had begun in places and expressed optimism that a “New Gaza” could be rebuilt relatively quickly.
“In the Middle East, they build cities like this — two, three million people — they build this in three years, so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen,” he said. He added that the process would start with Rafah, which before the war was the main city in southern Gaza.
The slides that accompanied Kushner’s speech provided few details but envisaged at least $25bn of investments in “modern, reliable utilities and public services”; at least $3bn in commercial zones, business districts, micro-grants and loans; and at least $1.5bn in vocational schools and training.
There is little clarity so far on how the reconstruction of Gaza will be funded, and Kushner gave no details on Thursday about where the money would come from. But he said contributions from various countries would be announced at a conference in Washington in a couple of weeks.
“From the private sector, there will be amazing investment opportunities. I know it’s a little bit risky to be investing in a place like this, but we need you to come, take faith, invest in the people, try to be a part of it,” he said.
Kushner acknowledged it would be hard to persuade anyone to invest in Gaza without security, but he said that disarming Hamas would be a key focus and set out a series of “demilitarisation principles”.
“Without security, nobody is going to make investments, no one is going to come and build there. We need investments in order to start getting jobs,” he said, adding that Trump wanted to bring “free market economy principles” to Gaza.