Middle East Eye blasts Jared Kushner’s development plan for Gaza, presented at Davos a couple of days ago, as a plan to erase Palestinian culture from the enclave. 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.”
But MEE begins with the image of a “harrowing cartoon” by Dutch political cartoonist Peter de Wit which 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.
MEE goes on to report that 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. As an example of such profiteering, Levy mentions the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a highly controversial project set up by the U.S. and Israel in which private contractors were accused of turning aid distribution into a “profit-driven death trap.”
As an example of such profiteering, Levy mentions the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a highly controversial project set up by the U.S. 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. “This is how corporations, especially American ones, work. They see disasters as an opportunity to invest,” he told 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.”
