|
Trending Topics
|
Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/01/28/trump-gaza-economic-plan-kushner-davos-ideology/
Palestinians Offered Prosperity for Giving Up Dream of Israel's Destruction See It as Humiliating Bribery
(Israel Hayom) Dr. Nissim Katz - At the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Donald Trump's former senior advisor Jared Kushner presented a vision for what Gaza would look like, under the title "Empowering Gazans with Jobs, Training, and Services." This vision is based on real estate deal logic: property improvement, value creation, and bringing prosperity. Its foundational assumption, held also by Israel before Oct. 7, is that humans are, first and foremost, rational economic creatures. If we just provide Gazans good livelihoods, luxury hotels, a port, and factories, the motivation for terror will decrease until it disappears. But Middle Eastern reality and Palestinian reality proves again and again that the struggle is not about quality of life. The critical mistake of the Trump-Kushner approach is the attempt to reduce a deep national, religious, and identity conflict to a cash-flow and urban-development problem. The Palestinian national movement, and especially its extremist branches controlling Gaza, have never placed economic welfare at the top of their priorities. If they had wanted that, Gaza could have become the Singapore of the Middle East a decade ago, with the billions of dollars that flowed to it. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are driven by an ideology that sees eliminating Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel as a lofty goal, sanctifying any sacrifice including poverty and hunger of their own people. For them, the land is not real estate waiting for a developer, but waqf land that must be liberated. When offered prosperity in exchange for giving up the dream of Israel's destruction, they see it as humiliating bribery. The thought that money will buy quiet is an optical illusion. This is a national struggle. The other side is not seeking a business partnership, but historical victory. A discourse about economic development, without first neutralizing the nationalist-religious aspiration to destroy Israel, is a recipe for repeated disaster. The writer is a senior lecturer at Kinneret Academic College.