Blueprint presented by Jared Kushner shows unified Gaza run by Palestinians, with Rafah crossing to open next week
Amid the hullabaloo and self-congratulation of Donald Trump’s “board of peace” launch in Davos, his administration laid out specific plans for the short- and long-term future of Gaza, aimed at a lasting peace.
The blueprint set out on Thursday was extremely ambitious. It envisages a unified Palestinian-run Gaza, which represents a rebuff to the aims of Israeli extremists, including some in the governing coalition, who have sought the deportation of Gaza’s population and the building of Israeli settlements in its place.
The plan’s success will depend largely on whether Trump and his board of peace has the determination to implement the plan, overcoming Israeli objections and obstruction – and whether a mechanism can be created inside Gaza to oversee the disarming of Hamas.
A slideshow presented in Davos by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner imagined a futuristic dreamscape of gleaming apartment blocks and office towers, with neat industrial parks and residential districts – and even an airport. The territory had a slice taken off it to create a buffer zone along the Israeli border, and was treated as blank slate, ignoring the property rights of generations of Palestinians, but it was a move away from a partition between Hamas and Israeli-run halves.
