The Hamas Movement has said that White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s revelations about the economic section of the deal of the century was an offer to exchange the Palestinian people’s national cause and rights for money and projects describing it as “a cheap exchange.”
In a press release on Saturday Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum affirmed that the Palestinian people would never allow such “suspicious” deal to succeed.
“We are aware of the gravity of such American plans and some people’s compliance with them and their attempts to embellish them and execute them in order to obliterate and liquidate the Palestinian cause through the economic portal and politicized money but our people from all spectra will face such plans and projects and will frustrate any suspicious deal” spokesman Barhoum said.
The spokesman called on Arab states not to participate in or deal with the “ominous” Bahrain economic conference and to respect the unanimous Palestinian position that rejects the holding of this event.
Kushner on Saturday outlined a $50 billion Middle East economic plan that would create a global investment fund to boost economies of the Palestinians — in particular — and neighboring Arab states and fund a $5 billion transportation corridor to connect the West Bank and Gaza.
The “peace to prosperity” plan set to be presented by Kushner at an international conference in Bahrain soon includes dozens of infrastructure and business projects.
Such US approach toward reviving the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process was strongly criticized by the Palestinians on Saturday.
The ambitious economic revival plan the product of two years of work by Kushner and other White House aides would take place only if a political solution to the region’s long-running problems is reached according to experts.
More than half of the $50 billion would be spent in the economically troubled Palestinian territories over 10 years while the rest would be split between Egypt Lebanon and Jordan. Some of the projects would be in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula where investments could benefit Palestinians living in adjacent Gaza according to Kushner.
The plan also proposes nearly a billion dollars to build up the Palestinians’ tourism sector a seemingly impractical notion for now given the frequent flare-ups between the Israeli occupation forces and the Palestinian resistance in Gaza and the tenuous security in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
