How Jared Kushner's Gaza plan would erase Palestinian culture
A harrowing cartoon by Peter de Wit depicts parents sunbathing on an idyllic beach in Gaza, while their toddler blissfully digs up skulls in the sand.
De Wit’s “Gaza Beach 2030” won the award for best political cartoon in the Netherlands last year.
Now, a plan unveiled by US President Donald Trump's son-in-law might just bring such a dystopian image to reality.
Jared Kushner, who serves as a US special envoy, announced plans for a “New Gaza” - complete with shiny skyscrapers, coastal tourist attractions and entire districts dedicated to business and commerce.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kushner told global leaders that the Palestinian enclave would be run under “free market economy principles”.
He said these would seek to mirror the “same mindset and same approach” as Trump’s America.
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Analysts believe that this plan is yet another example of corporations and individuals attempting to profit from war and genocide.
“People have made money from this genocide and it's a continuation,” Daniel Levy, a British-Israeli analyst and former peace negotiator, told Middle East Eye.
More than 71,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war on Gaza, which has been recognised as a genocide by the United Nations, genocide scholars and human rights organisations.
As an example of such profiteering, Levy mentions the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a highly controversial project set up by the US and Israel in which private contractors were accused of turning aid distribution into a “profit-driven death trap”.
Abed Abou Shhadeh, a Palestinian political analyst based in Jaffa, cites Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism as perfectly encapsulating how conflicts and disasters are exploited by powerful entities.
"Gaza Beach 2030" by Peter de Wit. pic.twitter.com/55CKmBAghO
— Agent Smart (@agentsmart) January 22, 2026
“This is how corporations, especially American ones, work. They see disasters as an opportunity to invest,” he tells MEE.
“Me and you might see the death of people as something tragic. They see the death of people as an opportunity to take their land, to take their apartments, and to take the rights over their land.”
Abou Shhadeh said those profiting will not only be American and Israeli, but also from a diverse range of countries. They will include Arab businesspeople, he says, and could even involve individual wealthy Palestinians.
'The most striking feature of the plan is the total denial of any Palestinian agency'
- Avi Shlaim, academic
“But at the end of the day, the Palestinian people themselves are excluded.”
Renowned British-Israeli academic Avi Shlaim believes the project is “preposterous and obscene”.
“Kushner’s plan for Gaza is a classic colonial project which totally disregards the rights and aspirations of the local populations,” he said.
“The most striking feature of the plan is the total denial of any Palestinian agency.”
Skyscrapers resembling the Gulf
Kushner’s slide deck at Davos included AI renderings of what a “New Gaza” would look like.
In one slide - perhaps confirming the lack of Palestinian involvement - there’s Arabic written in the wrong direction.
Another slide shows an image of a skyline filled with glass skyscrapers, with men in long white thobes and ghutras on their heads looking on.
The scene bears no resemblance to Palestinian architecture, history or culture. Instead, it looks like a city in the Gulf.
That is not a surprise, given both Trump and Kushner’s close relationships to Gulf states.
After leaving the White House at the end of Trump's first term, Kushner's private equity firm reportedly received large sums of money from the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
'This is how corporations, especially American ones, work. They see disasters as an opportunity to invest'
- Abed Abou Shhadeh, analyst
“Kushner and his ilk know the Gulf. They have a real familiarity with property developments there, as well as in the US,” says Levy.
“What they have no inkling of or appreciation for is community, or any sense of a person's rootedness on one's land,” he adds.
It’s not the first time Gaza has been referred to as a depoliticised economic zone resembling somewhere else: it was touted decades ago by Israeli leaders as a high-tech hub akin to Singapore.
Levy notes that at the same time that Kushner and Trump were announcing these plans, Israeli bulldozers were demolishing the headquarters of the United Nations' refugee agency for Palestinians, Unrwa, in occupied East Jerusalem.
He connects the two events.
“It's coming from the same place. You're trying to end people's connection to that land, to the broader expanse of Palestine. This is about erasing that connection.”
Abou Shahdeh agrees and says that even if Kushner and Trump's plans involve individual Palestinian technocrats, it does not represent Palestine.
“These technocrats - they might be amazing people - but as long as they're there just as individuals, you're not speaking as the Palestinian people,” he says.
“When we talk about Palestinians, about community and organising, you need people to be part of a group to have their legitimacy. You need to be part of something bigger.”
Hamas won't go quietly
Most analysts believe that the likelihood of such a “free market Gaza” ever existing is low.
Kushner spoke at length about the various stages of the demilitarisation of Hamas during his address at Davos. He noted that no reconstruction would commence until there was full disarmament.
Annelle Sheline, a former US State Department official who resigned over the Gaza war, sees that as a major stumbling block.
“I anticipate that Hamas will maintain its stated commitment to not fully disarm unless a state of Palestine is established,” she tells MEE.
Sheline said that even while waging a war that ignored restrictions imposed by international law on civilian harm, Israel was unable to force Hamas to surrender or disarm.
“It is unlikely that another entity would be more successful at doing so,” she says.
“Trump should keep in mind the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan - criticism of which helped to make him an appealing candidate to Americans fed up with futile occupations and wars.”
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