The Trump Administration’s Plans for Gaza
Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have been busy planning Gaza’s future — when the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won — and they see the Strip as a “glittering metropolis,” both a tourist destination and a center for high-end high-tech businesses. If this sounds crazy, it’s because it is crazy. More on their view of the future of Gaza can be found here: “Trump admin. pitches ‘Project Sunrise’ to turn Gaza into ‘futuristic coastal destination’ – WSJ,” Jerusalem Post, December 20, 2025:
The WSJ also notes that the presentation doesn’t specify which countries or companies would fund the reconstruction, nor where Gaza’s residents would live during the rebuilding. This has caused some US officials to express doubt about the plan, with some saying that Hamas will refuse to disarm in the first place.
The obvious place for the Gazans to move to during this removal of rubble and then the reconstruction of infrastructure is Egypt’s Sinai, but Egypt refuses to allow Gazans into the country. It doesn’t want two million impoverished Gazans coming through the Rafah Crossing into the Sinai, where Egypt would be responsible for their care and feeding. Egypt is a poor country, but even if rich Arab states were to provide Cairo with enough money to take care of the Gazans, they will remain a troublesome, and potentially dangerous, presence. The Egyptian regime is fearful of Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, bringing its ideology into Egypt. Why would Egypt change its position now?
And even when the rubble is removed, Gaza will remain dangerous, given the vast amount of unexploded ordinance that will take years to find and render harmless, and the remaining networks of tunnels that those Hamas holdouts who refuse to surrender may be using? How likely is it that Western tourists will want to visit Gaza, given those dangers? Will Western women be allowed to sunbathe on the beaches of Gaza that Trump promised could be turned into a “Riviera”? Will the Gazans themselves be able to create a safe and carefree ambience for visitors, when they have been taught to regard those possible visitors, Infidels all, as “the most vile of created beings”?
Gaza can be cleared of its rubble, but it will take at least a decade to compete the task; the tunnel network underneath Gaza will make it slow going, as there will be an enhanced danger of the ground over those tunnels collapsing into them, especially with the added weight of the rubble-clearing heavy machinery. And only after the rubble is cleared will some modest reconstruction be possible. Keep in mind the scale of the task in Gaza, where there are now 123,464 destroyed structures out of over 198,000 damaged structures.
Gaza will never be a tourist destination, any more than Libya, or Algeria, or Yemen — all Arab states with even longer coastlines — will ever be such.
Nor will Gaza ever become a “high-tech hub,” any more than the Democratic Republic of Congo will, or Yemen, or Papua New Guinea. The Gazans — there is no way to put this politely — have much lower IQs than the people in Israel, East Asia, Europe, and North America. They should be able to manage small scale manufacturing, textiles and toys, but high-tech is out of the question, unless the Israelis, in a fit of lovingkindness and tikkun olam, decide to “partner” with Gazan Arabs in such enterprises, where Israeli brains can direct Gazan mano d’opera. Could the Gazans, brought up since birth to hate Israelis, submit to being directed by them in such “high-end high-tech” businesses that assorted trumps and witkoffs are predicting will be the future of Gaza? No, of course not.
Trump is whistling in the dark. He refuses to recognize that Hamas has said no, a thousand times no, and instead of disarming, is readying itself both with new recruits, and new weapons supplied by Qatar, to fight against any attempt by anyone to disarm it. If Trump is determined to force Hamas to disarm, he could send American arms and money to the clan-based militias, to help them in their battles throughout Gaza with Hamas. Or he could declare that “because Hamas refuses to disarm, I have told the Israelis that they should no longer feel bound by the ceasefire that was attained in Phase One, and should go after Hamas on both sides of the Yellow Line.” Or he might even have added that “along with the clan-based militias that have been fighting Hamas so bravely, and the IDF forces that are now relieved of having to observe a ceasefire, I will be sending in American airplanes and drones to help reduce Hamas’ forces on the ground to smithereens. I promised I would bring peace to Gaza, and the possibility of prosperity to the Strip, and that’s exactly what I will do.”
AUTHOR
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