Posted on 02/11/25
| News Source: Times of Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner during his visit to Washington last week, Axios reports.
The pair discussed a number of issues including US President Donald Trump’s controversial plan for the takeover of the Gaza Strip, the report says, citing senior officials familiar with the meeting.
Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, was reportedly a driving force behind Trump’s plan and was involved in crafting the announcement on the matter, which the president made alongside Netanyahu at a White House press briefing.
Kushner had appeared to hint at the plan — which involves emptying the Strip of its residents and turning it into “the Riviera of the Middle East” — in a speech he gave last year.
“Gaza’s waterfront property — it could be very valuable, if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner said during an event at Harvard.
“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,” he had added. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterward.”