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Post-war development in the Gaza strip?




 As everyone likely now knows, the US President has a plan to make the Gaza strip into a sort of French Riviera, a high-value vacation destination.  There will surely be lots of Trump properties there in this imagined future. There won't be a lot of Palestinians, though. The displaced people of Gaza will get some other nice place to live, but won't get to go back to Gaza.  

They've been displaced before.  They must be used to it by now.  Amirite? 

Donald Trump says the United States will "own" Gaza. I put quote marks around that word because he is not thereby saying Gaza will come under US sovereignty.  He is saying the US will own it -- ownership and sovereignty are two distinct facts. It is possible he has in mind Israeli sovereignty, and US ownership within Israeli law. If the hotels make money, Israel will have to be cut in with "a piece of the action," as grifters like to say. 

Anyway: this imagined future is as likely to be the actual future as, say, Canada is likely to clamor to become the 51st state any time soon. 

A slightly more sane proposal is now on the table, though. Egypt, with support from the 'moderate Arab' world, has set out a Gaza reconstruction plan. The European Union has said that this plan offers a "serious basis for discussions". 

There is apparently a 90 page English language statement of the plan floating around. I have not seen it.  At Bloomberg News they say that they have seen it. It postulates a reconstruction with multiple phases, with right of return for the displaced Palestinians, and with a total cost after five years of US$53.2 billion. 

On the delicate point of policing and peacekeeping, the Egyptian plan looks to the vetting by Egypt and Jordan of a domestic police force and the possibility of a UN Security Council supervised international peacekeeping force. 

The plan does not mention Hamas. Perhaps the vetting by Egypt and Jordan is designed to keep Hamas out of the proposed police force, and presumably by extension out of the future of Gaza altogether. Hamas seems not to have been a negotiating partner at this table. 

At any rate: I personally welcome this plan.  Somebody has to step in and it may as well be the 'moderate' Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan who start bringing some order out of this chaos. I have no great hopes but they should take their shot. It won't be Netanyahu's government and it certainly won't be the United States of the next nearly-four years leading any moves toward peace. 

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