US’ Gaza ‘Master Plan’ clashes with reality

Anyone who saw Jared Kushner’s PowerPoint presentation in Davos last week without knowing the topic would have struggled to identify the territory to which he was referring. Many might have thought this was for North America, with shiny new office and residential blocks and a certain space-age or Hollywood sci-fi feel to the slides of the “Master Plan.”

The vaulting ambition of the speaker may have impressed his father-in-law, US President Donald Trump, who is certainly familiar with the world of real estate. No doubt Trump, the freshly minted chairman of the Board of Peace, was the premier target of the messaging. It reflected much of what was released at the announcement of Trump’s “Gaza riviera” plan last February, which envisaged the Strip being entirely emptied of Palestinians. Even this version treats Gaza as a tabula rasa to impose whatever architectural fantasies its authors can conjure up. It treats the enclave as being devoid of any culture, tradition or history.

Others have been more skeptical — and with good reason. First of all, Israel has not even adhered to the Oct. 10 ceasefire and is bombing and shelling with intensity. Second, the full entry of aid, as referenced in the Trump peace plan, has not yet been achieved. Third, the plan presumes the disarmament of Hamas, something that is far from imminent. Finally, no international stabilization force is on the horizon.

Those are the significant near-term impediments. Delivering this plan, at a time when the conflict still rages, will be nigh on impossible. Just clearing the 60 million tonnes of rubble, which is peppered with unexploded ordnance and a host of toxins, will take an age and cost a fortune.

One major element Kushner did not address was how the land would be acquired and whether owners would be compensated

Chris Doyle

One major element Kushner did not address was how the land would be acquired and whether owners would be compensated. According to a 2015 study, about half of the land in Gaza is privately owned. Much of the land is unregistered because owners did not wish to pay tax. What is clear is that the companies lining up to fill their coffers have no claim to the land at all.

But progress also presumes the Israeli leadership will be comfortable with this. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still smarting from the invitation that was extended to Turkiye and Qatar to join the executive committee of the Board of Peace. Many members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet and right-wing Knesset members have dreams of inhabiting these plush new riviera residences themselves.

Israel will have to consent as the occupying power. For starters, it will have to allow in all the construction materials and abandon its restrictive dual-use list.

Throughout Kushner’s presentation to world leaders and the business elite, it was clear that Palestinians have had no input into these plans — and not just because the Arabic on the slides was all wrong. He did not outline how the local Palestinians in Gaza would be won over by the project or where they would go during reconstruction. Kushner said Gaza would be run on free-market principles, as opposed to how Palestinians might wish to shape their economic future.

It was clear that Palestinians have had no input into these plans — and not just because the Arabic on the slides was all wrong

Chris Doyle

Do Palestinians want tourism, given the beachfront is all labeled for coastal tourism? Who decided on the importance of data centers at this stage? And how many of the companies making a fortune out of this dreamworld will be Palestinian and how many will be rich businessmen with no link to Gaza at all?

The Palestinians in Gaza I have spoken to largely see this all as a sick joke. “Who is going to live in these villas and flashy apartments? Certainly not us Palestinians,” sighed one woman. Another said: “What will stop Israel from bombing them again? Where will our security come from? We need that before rich houses.”

But there is also the issue of who will pay for it. The experts at the UN, those who actually have experience of such situations, calculate that postwar reconstruction will cost about $70 billion. This is without the high-end infrastructure of Kushner’s presentation. The UAE has reportedly expressed an interest in funding the first planned community on the outskirts of Rafah in the south. Beyond that, it is not clear.

More alarming is who might make money out of it. This is a war zone profiteering racket. US companies are lining up at the trough.

This is all premised on the naive and ill-founded belief that the entirety of Gaza’s problems can be resolved with bulldozers, cranes and cement. The plan has echoes of earlier economic roadmaps for peace, but even those were not so divorced from reality. At no stage did the presentation reference a viable peace process or even mention that Gaza would be the western segment of an independent state of Palestine. It did not address a single one of the underlying causes or drivers of this 100-year-plus conflict.

On this occasion, the last word goes to French President Emmanuel Macron, who was reported as saying: “Peace is not a real estate transaction. You cannot build stability on the erasure of a people’s history and the privatization of their tragedy.”

• Chris Doyle is director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding in London. X: @Doylech