Jared Kushner speaks about post-war Gaza, explaining why implementing peace is more difficult than making business deals. Reflecting on years of conflict, hopelessness, and the challenge of changing mindsets, Kushner outlines what comes next after war and how peace must be built step by step. The remarks were delivered during a high-level event focused on peace efforts in Gaza and the Middle East.
#JaredKushner #Gaza #GazaWar #PeaceProcess #MiddleEast #IsraelGaza #GlobalNews #WorldEconomicForum #Davos2026 #InternationalNews #APT
#JaredKushner #Gaza #GazaWar #PeaceProcess #MiddleEast #IsraelGaza #GlobalNews #WorldEconomicForum #Davos2026 #InternationalNews #APT
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00SECRETARY POMPEO- Thank you, everyone, and welcome here.
00:19This is really my honor to be up here speaking.
00:23I remember when the President asked Jared and, of course, our great Secretary of State
00:29to work on something that the world thought was impossible and unattainable.
00:36But the President on this peace deal for Gaza, as on all other deals we work on on his behalf,
00:43said we had to try.
00:45And of course, we were inspired by that.
00:50We have achieved a peace deal in Gaza.
00:54We have brought the hostages home, all of the bodies except for one, and we will bring
00:59that body home too.
01:01And maybe most importantly, we have created a sense of hope for what the future can bring
01:07to Gaza and all other places where the Board of Peace will operate.
01:13And I am so honored, Mr. President, to have worked on this on your behalf.
01:19I'd like to thank some people who are here with us tonight who have done so much, done indispensable
01:29work to bring this deal together.
01:31Sheikh Mohammed, my good friend from Qatar and Ali Al-Tawadi, Haqqan, Fidan and Ibrahim, General
01:44Hassan, and Foreign Minister Badr Abdullati, and of course, President Sisi, and Prime Minister
01:53Netanyahu, former Special Envoy Ron Dermer, and Michael Eisenberg for all that they did.
02:00I would also like to thank our core working group and members of the Board of Peace who
02:06have been working nonstop on behalf of this incredible, noble effort.
02:13They are on the clock for months on end, sacrificing time with their families and their own personal
02:18lives because they believe in the mission and the vision that the President has set out
02:23for us.
02:25I'd also like to thank those people include Tony Blair, Yakhir Gabay, Josh Grunbaum, Arie Lightstone,
02:35Leron Tunkman, Admiral Cooper, General Frank, and I probably have forgotten some along the way.
02:44And then, perhaps most importantly, I want to thank our administration.
02:48We have an incredible team.
02:50It's amazing to work for this administration.
02:52I think you see the results that we get on behalf of the President because he inspires
02:57us so much.
02:59So I'd like to thank the Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance, for all of
03:03his help and guidance, our Treasury Secretary, of course, the Secretary of State who we work
03:09hand in glove with, and a special thanks to our Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, who is always
03:15available to us for consultation, for steering, and for all else that she does.
03:28Thank you, Steve.
03:29And I have to say, one of the great honors for me of being able to work on this has been
03:33working with Steve, who really is as brilliant as he is.
03:37His heart is tremendous.
03:38He's a lot of fun to be with.
03:40And even in some of these very difficult moments where we didn't think things would happen,
03:45working together really was an amazing treat.
03:46I'm going to go down today just through a couple of quick slides just to show you the progress
03:50that's been made in the last couple of months.
03:52It was just over 100 days ago that we got the final deal done, and everyone was celebrating
03:57and joyous about the hostages coming home and the end to this long war that nobody thought
04:01was possible.
04:02And Steve and I were panicking, saying, what do we do next?
04:05How do you implement peace?
04:06And as you guys know, peace is a different deal than a business deal because you're changing
04:10a mindset.
04:11And in Israel, there was two years of very intense war.
04:14For the people in Gaza, there was more than just two years of war.
04:17They had 20 years of hopelessness being ruled by a terrorist organization.
04:21For the people in the Middle East, their hearts were pulled by this.
04:24And throughout the entire world, it really was weighing on us.
04:26And so we needed to think about, what do we do next?
04:28How do we change the habits?
04:29How do we change the behaviors?
04:31And we really got to work right away.
04:33And the team that Steve thanked, including the White House team and the team, the volunteers,
04:38it's really been an incredible effort, very entrepreneurial.
04:41And we really did it in the way.
04:42I've been working now with President Trump for 10 years on politics, and what continues
04:46to amaze me is that he always takes a first principles approach and says, what's the most
04:50optimal outcome?
04:51Aim for that.
04:52Whereas politicians are always focused on the downside or what could go wrong or how
04:56to make it a little bit better.
04:57He always says, aim for the best possible and do your best to get there.
05:01And if everyone thinks it's impossible, that's even more reason why you should aim for it.
05:05And so really thank you for the leadership and the inspiration for doing this.
05:08And I think you'll see today we've achieved more than thought was possible, and our ambition
05:12is still to go for something, I think, better than most people think is possible as well.
05:17So let's see if these things work.
05:18They never usually work.
05:20Good.
05:21So quickly, I'll go through this two-year war, 90,000 tons of munitions.
05:25There's over 60 million tons of rubble there, and tens of thousands of fatalities.
05:30Through the ceasefire, we were able to get to the 20-point plan, the ceasefire, release
05:34of hostages.
05:35Getting the U.N. resolution passed was a huge, huge effort, really thanks to Mike Waltz
05:40and the whole team there.
05:41They did an incredible job.
05:43And we then, with the help of the U.N., we've worked very, very well with them.
05:47This is why you need a new organization like the Board of Peace to work with the U.N.
05:50I want to thank Tom Fletcher, did an incredible job of really getting it going.
05:54We've done historic humanitarian aid.
05:56Going forward, number one thing is going to be security.
05:59Obviously, we've been working very closely with the Israelis to figure out a way through
06:03de-escalation.
06:04And the next phase is working with Hamas on demilitarization, which I'll talk about in
06:07a second.
06:08But without security, nobody's going to make investments.
06:11Nobody's going to come, you know, build there.
06:12We need investments in order to start giving jobs.
06:15We want to take these people, 85% of the aid of Gaza, 85% of the GDP of Gaza has been aid
06:21for a long time.
06:22That's not sustainable.
06:23It doesn't give these people dignity.
06:24It doesn't give them hope.
06:26And so we want to use free market economy principles.
06:28A lot of what President Trump spoke about that he's doing in America.
06:30We want to bring the same mindset and the same approach to a place like Gaza to give these
06:35people the ability to thrive and have a good life.
06:38Let's see.
06:40So on the aid, I mentioned the U.N.
06:43So now, people are talking about famine, 100% of the food needs are met.
06:48And that's been overabundance.
06:50The costs of goods have gone down tremendously.
06:52Over 55,000 trucks have gone in and over 1.4 million pallets.
06:56And it's been the largest humanitarian effort done into a war zone that anyone's been able
07:01to tell us about.
07:02This really has been a great joint effort that everyone's been able to do.
07:05And so it's a great thing.
07:07We all just heard from Ali.
07:09We have been so impressed.
07:10Steve and I were speaking to him and the entire committee.
07:13Such bravery of these people to step up.
07:16And we've worked with the Palestinian Authority who's been helping us as well.
07:19But this committee is the first time it's a technocratic, apolitical committee.
07:23I really want to thank the Arab partners for helping us select the right people to do this.
07:27And we just need to believe in them and support them.
07:29I put this up here.
07:30It's probably a little too small for me to read.
07:31But this is really important if you saw the mission statement.
07:34So Hamas' mission statement was we need to destroy the state of Israel.
07:38That has not worked well for the people as we've seen.
07:39Their mission statement is we are committed to establishing security, restoring the essential
07:44services that form the bedrock of human dignity, such electricity, water, healthcare, and education,
07:51as well as cultivating a society rooted in peace, democracy, and justice, operating with
07:56the highest standards of integrity, transparency.
07:59So these are the basic things.
08:00Their goal is to have peace and to help their people, which is an obvious mission statement
08:04for a government, but actually fairly novel for Gaza.
08:08So we did a master plan.
08:09We brought in, I thank you, Kirgabai, who's one of the most successful real estate developers
08:13and brilliant people I know.
08:15He's volunteered to do this not-for-profit, really because of his heart he wants to do
08:18this.
08:19And we've developed ways to redevelop Gaza.
08:20Gaza, as President Trump's been saying, has amazing potential.
08:23And this is for the people of Gaza.
08:25We've developed it into zones.
08:27In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, let's build a free zone, and
08:31then we have a Hamas zone.
08:32And then we said, you know what, let's just plan for catastrophic success.
08:34Hamas signed a deal to demilitarize.
08:36That is what we are going to enforce.
08:38People ask us what our plan B is.
08:39We do not have a plan B. We have a plan.
08:41We signed an agreement.
08:43We are all committed to making that agreement work.
08:45There's a master plan.
08:46We'll be doing it in phasing.
08:47In the Middle East, they build cities like this in, you know, two, three million people.
08:51They build this in three years.
08:52And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen.
08:55Rothel we'll start with.
08:57This will show a lot of workforce housing.
08:59We think this could be done in two, three years.
09:01We've already started removing the rubble and doing some of the demolition.
09:04And then new Gaza.
09:05It could be a hope.
09:06It could be a destination, have a lot of industry, and really be a place that the people there
09:10can thrive, have great employment.
09:12Once this starts going, we think there should be 100 percent full employment and opportunity
09:16for everybody there.
09:17And we have a lot of data on what can be.
09:19But we think that this really gives the Gaza people an opportunity to live their aspirations.
09:24But it all starts with security, and it all starts with governance.
09:27Final note I'll just say on the Board of Peace, which is that all the lessons we're doing is
09:32we're basically studying the best practices from all over the world.
09:34And we're watching who does education the best, who does health care delivery the best.
09:38All these things are, it's not secret IP.
09:41All this is IP that the Board of Peace is going to make public.
09:43And we want to encourage all the countries to be able to follow these best practices.
09:47A lot of the things that President Trump is doing in America, if they're working,
09:51we should all be copying them.
09:52If we find what's working in other countries, we should be copying them too.
09:55And so what the Board of Peace will have the ability to do if we're sexful with Gaza
09:59is really show how do you do peace implementation, which is something that when we got this deal
10:03done, we didn't really find too much expertise or know-how on how to do it.
10:07So as we're creating this system, hopefully it's something that we can just document these
10:11learnings and make them available to all else who want to use them in the future.
10:14So demilitarization, this is something we're starting now that we have a new government in
10:19Gaza.
10:19This government will be working with Hamas on the demilitarization to really take the
10:24principles that were agreed to in the document to the next phase.
10:27And hopefully that will be successful.
10:29Without that, we can't rebuild.
10:30So if Hamas does not demilitarize, that will be what holds back Gaza and the people of Gaza
10:36from achieving their aspiration.
10:37And that's very important.
10:38So the next 100 days, we're going to continue to just be heads down and focused on making sure
10:42this is implemented.
10:43We continue to be focused on humanitarian aid, humanitarian shelter, but then creating
10:48the conditions to move forward.
10:49So thank you.
10:51A final point I'll just make is this is really only possible because of the work of so many
10:56people and President Trump's great leadership.
10:58But a lot of you have been asking, how can we help?
11:00So the countries have all been incredibly generous.
11:02We'll be doing the first conference where we'll announce a lot of the contributions that
11:06will be made in a couple weeks in Washington.
11:08From the private sector, there'll be amazing investment opportunities.
11:12I know it's a little risky to be investing in a place like this, but we need you to come
11:15take faith, invest in the people, try to be a part of it.
11:19And then finally, I'll just talk to people on the media and on the social media, which is
11:24this deal only happened because we worked with Israel.
11:26We worked with Turkey.
11:27We worked with Qatar.
11:28We worked with Saudi.
11:29We worked with Egypt.
11:31I mean, everyone worked together.
11:32We worked with UAE.
11:33We all worked together to make this happen.
11:35I see a lot of people trying to escalate, you know, criticizing Israel or Israelis criticizing
11:40Turkey or Qatar.
11:41Just calm down for 30 days.
11:42I think that the war's over.
11:43Let's do our best to try working together.
11:46Our goal here is peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.
11:49Everyone wants to live peacefully.
11:50Everyone wants to live with dignity.
11:52Let's put our efforts towards promoting those who are doing the work to build this up,
11:55like Ali and his committee.
11:57Let's focus on the positive stories.
11:58And let's just calm down, turn a new chapter.
12:01And if we believe that peace is possible, then peace really can be possible.
12:05So we're going to continue to work every day.
12:06We need all of your help to do it.
12:08And again, I just really want to thank President Trump for his leadership in doing this.
12:11This would not have been possible without your commitment to this.
12:14Everyone thought it was impossible to end this war.
12:17You never gave up.
12:17You never stopped.
12:18Every time there was a setback, you told us to try harder.
12:21You gave us different ideas.
12:22And we've made several impossible things happen just in Gaza to date.
12:26And there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to make even more impossible things happen.
12:30So really, thank you for your amazing leadership.
12:40Thank you, Jared and Steve.
Comments