Gaza is not a real estate fantasy

By immoderate measure, Gaza’s devastation demands urgent and superior reconstruction. Homes, hospitals, schools, farms, taste heritage, and basal infrastructure prevarication successful ruins. Entire neighbourhoods person been erased. The humanitarian request is undeniable. But urgency should ne'er go an excuse for illusion, spectacle, oregon governmental shortcuts.

The opposition betwixt rhetoric and world could not beryllium sharper. While United States President Donald Trump and a radical of satellite leaders gathered successful Davos, Switzerland, to motion the charter of the alleged Board of Peace and unveil glossy reconstruction plans, the sidesplitting successful Gaza continued.

Since the ceasefire came into effect connected October 10, nary less than 480 Palestinians person been killed. Four of them were killed connected the precise time the charter was signed by 19 ministers and authorities representatives, galore of whom were little funny successful the contented of Gaza and overmuch much successful being seen alongside Trump.

Against that backdrop, the board’s cautiously staged optimism feels similar show alternatively than transformation. It resembles a sandpit wherever those signing up get to physique sandcastles with Trump that volition lavation distant with the archetypal existent wave.

The proposals whitethorn look awesome and dependable hopeful, but structurally, they are hollow. They sidestep the existent drivers of the conflict, marginalise Palestinian agency, privilege Israeli subject priorities implicit civilian recovery, and align uncomfortably with longstanding efforts to support the occupation, displace Palestinians, and contradict the close of instrumentality for the colonisation uprooted successful 1948 and 1967.

Gaza is not a existent property prospectus

The glossy imaginativeness of statesmanlike advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner treats Gaza not arsenic a traumatised nine emerging from catastrophic violence, but arsenic a blank concern canvas for luxury housing, commercialized zones, information hubs, beachfront promenades, and aspirational gross home merchandise (GDP) targets.

It reads little similar a betterment program and much similar a real-estate prospectus. Development connection replaces governmental reality. Sleek presentations regenerate rights. Markets regenerate justice.

But Gaza is not a failed start-up looking for task capital. It is location to much than 2 cardinal Palestinians who person endured siege, displacement, repeated wars, and chronic insecurity for decades. Reconstruction cannot win if it is detached from their lived experiences oregon if it treats Gaza chiefly arsenic an economical plus unfastened to speculative investment, including by utmost Zionists, alternatively than arsenic a quality assemblage struggling to sphere its individuality and societal fabric.

For galore families, adjacent humble homes successful Gaza’s ceremonial exile camps represented a fragile span worthy holding connected to arsenic a measurement towards an eventual instrumentality to places from which they were forced to flee, successful what is contiguous known arsenic Israel.

These homes were valued not for their comfortableness oregon marketplace worth, but for the societal networks they sustained and their symbolic links to continuity, memory, and governmental claims. Palestinians are truthful improbable to beryllium swayed by offers of glitzy towers, luxurious villas, oregon promises of a “market economy” nether siege. Their acquisition implicit the past decades has taught them that nary level of worldly betterment tin substitute for deeper aspirations tied to dignity, rootedness, and the close of return.

A aboriginal designed without Palestinians

A glaring flaw of Trump’s program is the systematic exclusion of Palestinians themselves from shaping the imaginativeness of their future. These plans are unveiled successful elite league halls, not debated with the radical whose neighbourhoods person been flattened.

Without Palestinian ownership, legitimacy collapses. Experience from Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere has shown repeatedly that reconstruction imposed from the extracurricular — nevertheless good branded — reproduces the precise powerfulness imbalances that substance instability successful the archetypal place.

Equally troubling is the plan’s deliberate avoidance of addressing the basal causes of Gaza’s suffering: occupation, blockade, and subject control. You cannot rebuild sustainably portion continuing to sphere and money the machinery that repeatedly destroys what is built.

No magnitude of concrete, branding, oregon overseas concern tin substitute for governmental resolution. A territory that remains militarily besieged, economically sealed, and politically subjugated volition ne'er execute durable recovery.

Prosperity cannot flourish wrong a cage. The European Union learned this acquisition the hard mode done aggregate reconstruction cycles it funded successful Gaza, which whitethorn assistance explicate wherefore nary of its members rushed to articulation the board, contempt being capable to spend the imperishable rank interest and contempt the governmental incentives of cultivating a much cordial narration with Trump successful airy of the warfare successful Ukraine and his threats connected Greenland.

Aiding Israel’s subject power done spatial redesign

There is besides a superior hazard that the proposed carnal plan of Gaza would entrench Israeli subject strategy alternatively than reconstruct Palestinian life. The plans envision buffer zones, segmented districts, and alleged “green spaces and corridors” that would interruption up the territory internally.

This benignant of spatial engineering would facilitate surveillance, control, and accelerated subject access. Urban readying would go information architecture. Civilian geography would crook into militarised space. What is sold arsenic modernisation would represent a blase strategy of containment, conscionable similar the amerciable colony networks and roadworthy systems successful the occupied West Bank.

The accent connected reclaiming onshore from the oversea utilizing rubble whitethorn repetition the problems of Beirut’s reconstruction aft the civilian war, wherever recently reclaimed areas attracted disproportionate concern due to the fact that they were escaped of unresolved ownership claims, yet allowing elites to due the city’s waterfront and propulsion it distant from nationalist use.

The demographic implications of the program are arsenic profound. Shifting Gaza’s colonisation centre southward — person to Egypt and further from Israel’s settlements — would softly change the governmental and societal centre of gravity of Palestinian life.

It whitethorn easiness Israeli information anxieties, but it would bash truthful astatine the disbursal of Palestinian continuity, identity, and territorial coherence. Population engineering nether the banner of reconstruction raises superior ethical concerns and risks externalising Gaza’s semipermanent humanitarian load onto neighbouring states. This whitethorn besides assistance explicate Egypt’s lack from the signing ceremonial and its determination to bounds information to its quality leadership.

No magnitude of governmental theatre tin regenerate freedom

The Board of Peace itself besides deserves cautious scrutiny. Its branding suggests neutrality and corporate stewardship, yet its governmental framing remains highly personalised astir Trump, with small clarity astir however it is meant to run successful practice.

This is not the benignant of multilateral peacebuilding mechanics envisaged by United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 of November 2025; it is governmental theatre. Peace mechanisms anchored successful personalities alternatively than institutions and planetary instrumentality seldom past governmental change.

At the bosom of each this lies a acquainted but unsafe assumption: that economical maturation tin substitute for governmental rights. History teaches the opposite. People bash not defy simply due to the fact that they are poor; they defy due to the fact that they deficiency dignity, security, state of expression, and self-determination. No maestro program tin bypass these realities. No skyline tin compensate for governmental exclusion.

This does not mean Gaza indispensable hold for the cleanable bid earlier rebuilding. Recovery indispensable proceed urgently. But rebuilding indispensable empower Palestinians alternatively than redesign their constraints. It indispensable dismantle systems of control, not embed them into factual and zoning maps. It indispensable face the governmental roots of demolition alternatively than cosmetically repackage its aftermath.

Until those foundations exist, the Board of Peace and Kushner’s imaginativeness hazard becoming precisely what they lucifer — a signifier of sandcastle diplomacy: awesome to the planetary public, comforting to elites, and destined to lavation distant erstwhile the archetypal superior question of governmental world arrives.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.