Filenews 6 February 2025 - by Marc Champion
It is tempting to dismiss Donald Trump's proposal to occupy Gaza as another crazy statement, designed to shift the conversation and mislead negotiating partners. To say that it is a delirium designed to secure "gradual victories". But watching his press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, I think we should be open to the idea that he could be serious.
Trump was reading a well-prepared text when he said that the US "will" take control of the Gaza Strip. The rationale and language he used were those of a rogue contractor, including his approach to Palestinian residents of the area. "You don't think you want to leave your homes," he might have said, "but believe me, you'll be better off in these wonderful new apartments that we're going to build you somewhere else."
If you're looking for more evidence that Trump's Riviera plan may be a considered proposal, listen to what Jared Kushner, the Presidents son-in-law, has been saying about Gaza's value as "seaside property" for at least a year. Or Trump's own language on Tuesday, even praising the materials used to build the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, the construction of which he ordered during his first term.
Similarly, the appointment of Steve Whitkoff, a billionaire New York real estate investor, by Trump as his special envoy to the region. Whitkoff's namesake company describes itself as: "A place of development. A part investor. A landscaping part." Seen in this light, Gaza must look like a unique opportunity: a coastal area with uncertain legal ownership status, with a fervently supportive neighbour, and with an obvious need for reconstruction.
Of course, you have to see it as a business deal for it to make sense, because once you treat it as a foreign policy proposal it makes absolutely no sense. Although some Palestinians in Gaza could leave if given the opportunity (always some accept expropriation in a redevelopment), it is highly unlikely that most will do so voluntarily, knowing that they will never be allowed to return.
Gaza is not an opportunity for real estate. It is an extremely complex territorial dispute of 70 years, made intractable by politics of identity, religion, ethnic identification and accumulated history of violence and hatred on both sides. A population of about 2 million will have to be evacuated by force, either at gunpoint or through starvation and neglect. In any case, the only accurate way to describe this kind of population transfer would be ethnic cleansing.
But it would be equally difficult to cajole Egypt into opening its border with Gaza to refugees or accepting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians or accepting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, as Trump's plan would require. Both have vehemently stated their own peoples would consider their governments to be collaborating with the US and Israel in a war crime against their Arab brothers. The political consequences could be extreme. The Gulf states are opposed to this for the same reason.
Any host government would also inherit a significant problem and burden. Palestinian demands for return to their homeland, and the terrorism that tends to follow when no political perspective is offered, would not go away. Hostility in the region towards the world's only Jewish state would, if anything, increase. Relocating Gaza's population would also carry Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The case of Jordan is particularly complex. Israeli leaders have been talking about transforming this young country – created only in 1920 and independent since 1946 – into a Palestinian state at least since Ariel Sharon was prime minister. The majority of the Arab nation's 11 million inhabitants are already of Palestinian origin. The Hashemite monarchy of Jordan worked hard to assimilate ethnic groups into a distinct Jordanian national identity, precisely so that the country would not become merely an extension of the West Bank and all its problems. When Amman agreed to sign the peace treaty with Israel in 1994, it insisted on a clause prohibiting "involuntary movements of persons in a manner prejudicial to the security of any party."
However, if Trump is serious about trying to force Israel's neighbours to accept what amounts to the end of Palestinian hopes for their own statehood, his argument needs to be thoroughly analyzed and countered. Because there are some things Trump said that were true during his high-profile press conference with a visibly happy Netanyahu.
It is a fact, for example, that Gaza is a "demolition site", full of bombs, as a result of Israel's punitive response to the horrors of the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023. And as any contractor would tell you, it would be cheaper and more efficient to flatten it all and rebuild it from scratch. Redevelopment plans have been drawn up for Gaza in the past, in preparation for Israel's surrender of Gaza to Palestinian administration in 2006. Proposals included an airport built on the sea, an artificial island and port, new rail links, an industrial zone along the border with Egypt and more. The first elections in Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal put an end to those dreams due to the victory of Hamas, a party openly committed to Israel's destruction.
It is also a fact that reconstruction will take time and that it is difficult to imagine any constructive solution for the Gaza Strip as long as Hamas remains in power. At the same time, with Israel still refusing to draw up a plan for the next day or a path to a political settlement, prospects for peace seem remote. Life will indeed remain, as Trump said, extremely difficult for Gaza's civilian population.
These problems must be resolved. If Trump's goal is indeed simply to "rattle" Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states into engaging in the reconstruction of Gaza, without the condition for Israel to first open the door to a two-state solution, then perhaps there is a rationale in all his madness. But given how unlikely it is that this will succeed, it is better to abandon the Riviera project and start working on how to reconcile Israeli and Palestinian interests.
Performance – Editing: Lydia Roumpopoulou
