JERUSALEM 

US President Donald Trump’s proposal to take over the Gaza Strip and resettle Palestinians elsewhere brings to mind an earlier suggestion by his son-in-law Jared Kushner about the potential value of “waterfront property” in the enclave.

Kushner, a former aide to Trump, suggested last year that Israel should remove the population out of the Gaza Strip while it “cleans up” the area.

“The thing that I would try to do if I was Israel right now is I would just bulldoze something in the Negev. I would try to move people in there. (…) So you can go in and finish the job,” he said in an interview with the Middle East Initiative, a program of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Kushner said Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable, suggesting that Israel should “move the people out” via the Rafah border crossing to Egypt or the Negev Desert “with the right diplomacy” and “then clean it up.”

Kushner was one of Trump’s senior foreign policy advisers in his first term in office between 2017 and 2021.

During Trump’s first term in office, Kusher was called the “architect” of his so-called “deal of the century” and played a major role in the normalization of Israel's with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.

Charles Kushner, his father, was recently nominated by Trump as US ambassador to France. He is also known for his close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Since Jan. 25, Trump has repeatedly suggested that Palestinians in Gaza should be taken in by regional Arab nations such as Egypt and Jordan, an idea rejected by both the Arab states and Palestinian leaders.

On Tuesday, the US president told a press conference with Netanyahu that the US will “take over” Gaza and resettle Palestinians elsewhere under an extraordinary redevelopment plan that he claimed could turn the enclave into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

His proposal was met with wide condemnations from the Palestinians, Arab countries and many other nations across the world, including Canada, France, Germany, and the UK.

Trump’s proposal to relocate Palestinians in Gaza first came after a ceasefire agreement took effect in the enclave on Jan. 19, suspending Israel’s genocidal war, which has killed more than 47,500 Palestinians and left the enclave in ruins.