Jared Kushner’s presentation in Davos this week was exactly the kind of bold, practical thinking conservatives admire: a detailed master plan to rebuild Gaza into a functioning, prosperous region rather than a perpetual terrorist safe haven. Launched at the Board of Peace gathering chaired by former President Trump, Kushner showed renderings and a phased vision that treats Gaza as an investment opportunity and a security challenge that must be solved together.
The plan is ambitious but straightforward: concentrate rebuilding in zones, beginning with Rafah and Khan Younis, and move northward into central camps and Gaza City, with targets that include more than 100,000 permanent housing units and massive infrastructure upgrades. Estimates for the upfront price tag range from roughly $25 billion to $30 billion, with proposals for ports, roads, an airport, and industrial zones to attract real private capital. This is the sort of market-minded, project-driven approach conservatives have been arguing for in foreign policy for years.
Kushner did not sugarcoat the hard truth: reconstruction will only come with demilitarization and a guarantee that Hamas cannot return to its former role as a terrorist state within Gaza. That insistence on security-first conditions — no rebuilding without real, enforceable disarmament — is the only realistic way to protect both Israelis and Palestinians from a repeat of the past. The rhetoric of “catastrophic success” might sound audacious to some, but audacity is what wins peace when weakness only invites war.
On the economic side, Kushner and the Board of Peace emphasize free-market tools: vocational training funds, commercial investment pools, and targeted job creation that could deliver hundreds of thousands of jobs in construction, manufacturing, and tech. Conservatives should champion that shift away from endless humanitarian aid dependency toward sustained economic opportunity and accountability for results. If Gaza’s future is built on incentives to work and trade, not subsidies for terror, the region’s trajectory can change for the better.
Predictably, the usual chorus of critics is already shrieking about displacement, surveillance, and “imperial” plans, but those warnings often confuse legitimate security measures with authoritarian overreach. Some projects will require vetting and biometric checks to ensure fighters don’t slip back into positions of power — inconvenient truths that must be acknowledged if we value the lives of civilians and the sovereignty of neighboring states. Conservatives who value law and order should be frank: rebuilding without real security guarantees is moral cowardice.
Jared Kushner is, by trade, a dealmaker — and that’s precisely the background needed to corral reluctant donors, private investors, and governments toward a practical reconstruction timetable. Washington should get out of the way where markets can lead, and lean in where American muscle is required to secure supply chains, financing, and oversight. The alternative is the status quo: decades of aid that props up militancy and misery, which no patriotic American should accept.
If conservatives want a foreign policy that delivers, this is the moment to support bold solutions: insist on demilitarization, demand transparency and oversight, and partner with allies and private enterprise to turn ruins into renewal. Standing for Israel’s security and championing economic liberty for Palestinians are not mutually exclusive — they are two sides of the same strategy to defeat jihadist terror and lift innocent people out of despair. Now is the time for courage, clarity, and American leadership.
