Golden Gaza

by George Thomas Clark 

Attired in sandals, pink swimming trunks, a purple T-shirt emblazoned Gaza, and cool big blue sunglasses, Jared Kushner, ace diplomat and son-in-law of Donald Trump, stepped before the Davos dandies, removed his shades, and laughed nervously before he said, “I sure hope you ladies and gentlemen didn’t see my speech and interview with students at Harvard a couple of years ago.”

“Yeah, we heard it,” shouted a diplomat from Montenegro.

Several ministers looked confusedly at each other, and one said, “No, no we didn’t. What did you say?”

Kushner grinned crookedly. “I said I’d do my best to move people out of Gaza and then clean the place up. The Israelis had said they didn’t want people to move back afterwards. I said if I were Israel, I’d bulldoze something in the Negev Desert, and try to get the people from Gaza there. I knew that wouldn’t be a popular thing to do.”

Unsure how to proceed, Kusher waited several seconds, and finally a woman in a hijab stood and asked, “What did the students ask?”

“I guess the toughest question was, ‘When will the Gazans return to their homeland?’”

“I said, ‘There’s really not much to return to in Gaza.’

“And that’s a perfect segue to my speech prepared for all of you today. I think you’ll find that President Trump and I and our team have forged a stunning peace agreement.”

He picked up a remote control from the lectern and lit up a big screen high on the wall behind him.

“Look at the difficulties we’re dealing with: ninety thousand tons of munitions were fired or dropped, sixty thousand tons of rubble cover the land, and tens of thousands of people are either in their graves or under the rubble.

“Thankfully, we now have a ceasefire, at least a ceasefire compared to what we’ve had most of the last two terrible years. We’ve gotten the Israeli hostages back, though many were dead. We have the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 which mandates the ‘full resumption of humanitarian aid (into) the Gaza Strip in a manner consistent with relevant international legal principles.’ And I do hope the Israelis will cease shooting starving Gazans when they rush to food trucks. The Resolution also mandates Historic Human Aid, calling ‘for the World Bank and other financial institutions to facilitate and provide financial resources to support the reconstruction and development of Gaza.’ There’s lots of other stuff, too, but it’s the Peace and Prosperity Section that most excites me. We’re pledging to have security, deradicalization, a free market economy, and reconstruction.

“Let me tell you, my family knows a lot about building and real estate. My father had a lot more money than Donald Trump before he was president, but Dad had to go to jail for a year after hiring a hooker to seduce his polygamous brother-in-law and filming the whole thing. Dad’s still rich but the president is more so after really kicking ass in the financial markets during his second term.

“We’re not going to have a terrorist Gaza enclave right in the middle of peaceful Egypt and Israel. We’re going to build a demilitarized Gaza on waterfront property that will be very valuable. The Gazans could have done this themselves, also investing in education and health care, if their political leaders hadn’t decided to build four hundred miles of tunnels beneath their cities.

“Now, look at this stunning artist’s rendering of the new Gaza. It’s going to be a happening place. It’s going to be a destination. Check out those elegant high rises and the beautiful beaches and yachts. This paradise-in-the-making looks like Miami Beach or Waikiki or Monaco. And we’re not going to have segregation. We’re going for the greatest result possible. We’re going to have peace and prosperity on the scenic Mediterranean. We should be able to do this in just two or three years.”

Jared Kushner turned to his left and looked at his proud father-in-law, President Donald J. Trump, and at length thanked him for his many contributions to peace in the Middle East and concluded, “We could never have achieved this without you, sir.”

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