While in Gaza the population continues to search for how to warm themselves and eat another day among the rubble caused by Israel’s incessant bombings in more than two years of genocide, Donald Trump’s Administration presented this Thursday in Davos what it has baptized as the “new Gaza.”
The project, presented at the World Economic Forum by the White House’s main advisor for the Middle East, is a “realistic” opportunity, according to Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who has insisted that there is no “plan B” to completely rebuild, from scratch, a Gaza Strip that Israel’s bombs have destroyed and that has been conceived as a great pole of attraction for investors, whose economy is based on the free market.
In fact, the slides with which Kushner presented in Davos show a coastal strip full of residential towers and hotels on the beachfront, a large port on the Mediterranean and an airport located on the border with Egypt. Also, in different phases, new cities would rise little by little, starting in the south of the Strip until ending in the north, in the devastated Gaza City. An urban model that is more reminiscent of Dubai or any vacation city that populates Florida, than of Gaza prior to the Israeli offensive, today reduced to a landscape of ruins.
Donald Trump himself, after the presentation event in Davos promoted by the US Administration, has appealed to his experience as a real estate developer to defend the economic potential of the ‘New Gaza’. “Take a good look at where this is, next to the sea. It is a spectacular location,” said the president before promising a “carefully designed” reconstruction with all the international support, although without daring to specify deadlines or committed financing.
A conditional plan
Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Donald Trump, at the presentation of the ‘New Gaza’ in Davos.
Beyond the images and promises, the project that the US has presented in Davos raises significant gaps. The most relevant, the condition imposed by Washington: the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip is subject to the complete disarmament of Hamas since the Israeli army takes effective control of the territory. “There is no plan B,” insisted Jared Kushner during the presentation of the project at the World Economic Forum.
This approach would imply that the first phases of the Gaza reconstruction project concentrate on the southern areas of the Strip that are already under Israeli military control, where hardly any civilian population resides, because the majority of the more than two million inhabitants of Gaza, displaced repeatedly since the beginning of the Israeli offensive, would be left out of a reconstruction that has been announced as comprehensive, but which in practice would be applied in a fragmented and conditional manner.
The plan also does not clarify what would happen to Gazans during the entire reconstruction of the Strip, nor where those who have now lost their homes, their neighborhoods and their livelihoods will live. Nor does it address sensitive issues such as property rights, compensation for destroyed homes or the future of the land on which new urban developments would be built. Some gaps that contrast with the level of detail with which the skyscrapers, infrastructures and aspects designed to provoke investors have been presented.
To all this we must add the lack of financial precision. Although the project has been presented as a great opportunity for private capital, the Trump Administration has not identified potential investors nor has it explained how a reconstruction that would require the removal of tons of rubble would be financed. “A conference will soon be held in Washington where many contributions from the private sector will be announced,” Kushner simply said during the presentation.
In Gaza, meanwhile, survival
Distribution of food and humanitarian aid in Gaza.
While luxury skyscrapers are being planned in Davos, in Gaza life continues to be reduced to pure survival. In neighborhoods like Al Mawasi, in Khan Yunis, entire families search through landfills to find materials to burn and keep warm at night. “Life is very hard. We can’t even have a cup of tea,” Sanaa Salah, a mother of six who lives in a tent, tells the agency. Associated Press.
Despite the ceasefire announced in October, Israeli bombings continue to increase the number of fatalities. In the past few days alone, Israeli bombs and artillery fire have killed several civilians, including journalists covering the situation on the ground. In the camps for displaced people, hundreds of thousands of people sleep in tents or semi-ruined buildings, in the open and without food.
The influx of humanitarian aid has increased compared to the most critical moments of the war in Gaza, but NGOs warn that the situation remains serious. “We have no alternatives. Our situation is miserable,” Fathi Abu Sultan, one of the displaced in Khan Yunis, summarizes to AP. According to the United Nations, only a portion of the almost one thousand displaced persons camps receive regular assistance and more than one and a half million people remain food insecure.
