When President Donald Trump followed up his bombshell Gaza as the “Riviera of the Middle East” announcement with an AI-generated social media post featuring him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lounging on deck chairs in front of “Trump Gaza,” not everyone was amused, though many were stunned.
Regardless, the idea of turning Gaza into something spectacularly different is not new. Shimon Peres famously used the expression “making Gaza Singapore,” comparing Gaza to the Asian island city-republic that, once poor, now has an AAA sovereign credit rating.
Before October 7, 2023, Saudi Arabia and Israel had been on the road to normalization. As a prelude to the kingdom signing on to the Abraham Accords, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) had insisted that the issue of a Palestinian state would have to be settled. Now, 17 months after the barbaric massacre and kidnappings of October 7, Hamas is significantly weakened, and the two-state solution is not currently on the table.
The future of the Gazans?
First, they must be deprogrammed. Reset of Gazans will lead to opportunities in vocational training, higher education, and the job market. A rebuilt and much improved Gaza will have to recreate an entire society, and there will be openings at all levels and in all fields.
The new Gaza would have a lot to offer what could become a mixed society of Palestinians, other Arabs, Western expatriates, and African and Asian construction and support workers.
With 65% of Gaza currently uninhabitable, a joint report issued by the United Nations in conjunction with the European Union and the World Bank titled “The UN Interim Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (IRDNA)” estimated that rebuilding and rehabilitating the enclave would cost $53.2 billion and take 10 years, once Hamas was permanently banished.
At present, 1.4 million Palestinians are said to be sheltering in Rafah. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah II continue to emphasize that Gaza’s reconstruction must begin without displacing Palestinians.
However, US Special Envoy on Gaza Reconstruction, Israeli Security, and the Future of Middle East Diplomacy Steve Witkoff, interviewed last week on the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Global Voice podcast said: “Right now, Gaza is a long-term redevelopment plan, and I think once the Saudis begin to incorporate that into their thinking, and the Egyptians and the UAE and everybody who has a vested interest in Gaza, I think you’re going to see development plans that [increasingly] mirror the way the president is thinking.”
Additionally, the Turkish news site Turkiye reported last week that at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Emirati Ambassador to Washington Yousef al-Otaiba said that he could not envision an alternative to Trump’s plan for Palestinian displacement from Gaza.
Fired into action by the US president’s plan, Cairo has already come up with a 10- to 20-year plan as an alternative to Trump’s Riviera, with funding from Gulf nations, Egypt’s state weekly Al-Ahram reported earlier this month.
EGYPT WANTS Gaza to be run by a new “Palestinian administration,” aligned with neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority, which would oversee reconstruction, the Associated Press reported. According to a recent write-up in the British daily The Telegraph, Egyptian officials envisage a reconstruction of Gaza managed by what they described as a “social or community support committee” composed of “independent technocrats and civil society representatives.”
“Security must be guaranteed for any new plan to come to fruition,” Israeli Foreign Ministry Special Envoy Fleur Hassan-Nahoum told The Jerusalem Report.
Meanwhile, UAE senior diplomatic adviser Anwar Gargash has praised as “appropriate and rational” Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit’s February 11 call for Hamas to step down “if the Palestinian interest requires it.”
DESPITE ALL the hype, Gaza is not the most densely populated place in the world – as is widely reported. It is, in fact, 11th on the list of population-dense countries and cities. Topping that list are the business and financial enclaves of Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, and Bahrain. What’s more, Gaza is surpassed in terms of over-population by the Maldives, Malta, Vatican City, and Bermuda.
Gaza has 40 kilometers of beaches. And while the area it covers, 365 square kilometers, appears relatively small, it is the same as Dubai’s.
At the end of 2023, Dubai’s population was estimated at 3.6 million, with about 90% of that figure made up by expatriates. Granted, Gaza is narrower and longer than Dubai, but aspects of life in the UAE metropolis that enable it to thrive and aim sky high can be recreated in Gaza.
Gaza, if it were to rehabilitate according to Trump’s plan, could become known as “Little Dubai.”
Over the last century, Dubai has grown into a center for regional and international trade, tourism, real estate, and financial services, among others. It has numerous luxury hotels, large shopping malls, and a cultural scene that includes theater, opera, art, museums, music, and film.
A senior manager in financial services working in a tax haven answered a query from the Report on condition of anonymity about the potential of providing financial services in Gaza: “Yes, Gaza can be the next Dubai. We could do financial services with a proper legal system, tax system, and regulatory system.”
HASSAN-NAHOUM, who is a co-founder and member of the UAE–Israel Business Council, spoke to the Report about her vision for the implementation of Trump’s plan for Gaza.
“Economic development in Gaza after the war would require a comprehensive, multi-sectoral approach to rebuild infrastructure, create jobs, and foster peace and stability,” she said. “Regional trade agreements could integrate Gaza into the regional Abraham Accords trade networks for goods and services.”
She stressed that any plan for the future of Gaza must include agriculture and food security, as well as digital expansion, entrepreneurship, and the private sector. Additionally, she alluded to developing the area as a tourist attraction, pointing to the use of Gaza’s coastline; and as a financial hub with international trade and investment.
“Growth in entrepreneurship and in the private sector in Gaza would make sense within the context of the Abraham Accords economic collaboration which, of course, includes the United States,” she said.
Hassan-Nahoum said she envisioned a return to the smart farming that flourished in Gaza until 2005, “when the Jewish communities who developed them were expelled.” They used hydroponics, aquaponics, and vertical farming “to maximize food production in limited space for local consumption and export.” She also believes it of utmost importance to “rehabilitate [Gaza’s] fishing sector with modern equipment and better access to fishing zones” and “increase water desalination projects.”
She told the Report that industrial zones could be built for manufacturing, logistics, and trade, in addition to special economic zones (SEZs). Export-oriented zones with tax incentives for investors were on her list, as well as encouraging e-commerce in the form of cross-border digital trade and online businesses, in addition to international trade and investment.
DUBAI BUILT its Palm Islands triple archipelago on land reclaimed from the sea, using 94 million cubic meters of sand. According to Tzvi Lev, a businessman and former Israeli diplomat, there is plenty of room off the seafront in Gaza for similar projects.
Lev, who specializes in unlocking new opportunities in MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) and Central Asia, spoke to the Report about the viability of building a “super port” in Gaza – a deepwater port, often offshore, built to accommodate supertankers of 100,000 tons or more. He said it made “geographic sense,” as Gaza is “a point between East and West.” The logistics are in place, he said. “Gaza has the perfect conditions, it is right near the coastline, and is only an hour’s drive to the airports of Sinai, Mitzpe Ramon, and Ben-Gurion.”
Referring to Dubai as “the original business hub,” Lev said that many international businesses that function there could eventually open branches in Gaza.
“Gaza could be a multicultural tourism hub,” he said, “with hotel operators and supply operators surely wanting to increase their business by constructing there.”
He said that Saudi Arabia has some of the best construction companies in the world and would be able to build Gaza up “within a year” with its logistical expertise and workforce “and with access to inexpensive labor from Africa.”
As a result of the fuse lit by Trump, an Arab summit in March is slated to discuss plans for the rebuilding of Gaza. How soon an agreement will be reached that is palatable to all the parties at the table, only time will tell. However, one thing is clear: There is no going back to the pre-October 7 status quo.■