Commentary
Jared Kushner’s neo-feudal model is underway
Perhaps no one embodies the fusion of public authority and private interest, politics and business, power and money better than Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law.
The agreement between Israel and Hamas, now being implemented, has been greeted with sincere enthusiasm around the world, giving the Trump administration its first taste of something approaching global support on an issue.
However, the relief at the end of the carnage and the likely release of hostages has been intertwined from the start with uncertainty and apprehension about the future. These doubts are fueled by the agreement’s vagueness on the next steps: from the transfer of power to a U.S.-led provisional administration to reconstruction programs dominated by the project of a “Gaza Riviera” tailored for real estate speculation.
This vagueness is not just a reflection of the many unresolved problems and the precarious balance among all the forces involved. It also stems from a specific characteristic that makes this agreement a complete departure from the standards of modern diplomacy, so much so that it feels like a harbinger of a new system of international relations, still in its infancy and which brings plenty of uncertainty and danger. The feature in question is the definitive symbiosis between public authority and private interest, politics and business, power and money. These two dimensions, of course, have never been entirely separate, except in the most abstract theories of politics and law. But they have never reached such a point of complete fusion as in the negotiations that led to the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement.
Perhaps no one embodies this fusion better than Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law. Despite holding no official position in the current administration, he was one of the agreement’s principal architects. It seems he was the one who secured the support of Turkey and Qatar, the only parties capable of exerting real pressure on Hamas. And from the start, he was the originator of the two diplomatic-business ideas that have been working underneath the surface to determine Gaza’s fate since before October 7, 2023: the project of intensively exploiting the Strip as a potential “real estate goldmine” and, before that, the Abraham Accords, which were intended to normalize trade relations between Israel and the Gulf monarchies while neutralizing both the Palestinian question and Iran’s hegemonic ambitions.
Kushner is not just a real estate developer, like Steve Witkoff and Trump himself. He is also the founder of a private equity firm, Affinity Partners, whose largest shareholder is Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which has invested more than $2 billion in the company since its founding. The group’s goal is to invest in American and, above all, Israeli high-tech companies. The fund currently holds significant stakes in two Israeli companies, amounting to the largest investment ever made by the Saudis in Israel.
That investment choice reportedly met with considerable resistance among the Saudi fund’s managers, overcome only by the direct intervention of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Kushner had been the prince's most outspoken defender during Trump’s first term, and this new deal is a sign that any past criticism has been relegated to history. Affinity Partners and the Saudi fund recently completed the acquisition of the American video game giant Electronic Arts for over $50 billion, relying heavily on leveraged buyouts – the credit-based acquisition system often at the center of the most unscrupulous predatory finance operations.
In such an intricate game, it is virtually impossible to distinguish the interests of governments from those of private individuals. On the other hand, it is certainly a positive surprise that such a murky fusion could lead to a peace agreement at all, however fragile and precarious.
The question that remains is how much the interests of the people who actually live in Gaza, and intend to stay there, will matter in the context of this fusion. Less than a year ago, in a talk at Harvard University, Kushner himself gave an indirect and hardly encouraging answer. Acknowledging the value of Gaza's “waterfront property,” he said that from Israel's perspective, he would “do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
Perhaps the negotiations since then have softened his outlook. We all hope so, of course, but one would do well not to harbor too many illusions. The fact is that the symbiosis between politics and business usually occurs at the expense of civil society, diminishing rights and imposing on entire populations the invisible role of ghost workers, an amorphous mass in service of the new monopolists of wealth and power.
That could happen tomorrow in Gaza and, in the future, in every other part of the world – unless a global resistance grows strong and determined enough to force a different course. That is why the great mobilization of recent days must not be allowed to fade. On the contrary, it is now more urgent than ever.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/al-via-il-modello-neofeudale-di-jared-kushner on 2025-10-12