https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/trump-take-over-gaza-strip-plan-israel-5stjt33bb
Blueprint for Trump’s plan to make Gaza ‘riviera of Middle East’ revealed
The president’s ‘beautiful real estate’ scheme for the war-torn territory may be inspired by an American-Israeli academic’s report
February 05 2025, 10.14am GMT
Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, met President Trump in Washington last week
EVAN VUCCI/AP
Trump and his allies appear to have drawn on several of its talking points, suggesting that rather than being bluff and bluster, the Republican may be working from an extraordinarily detailed blueprint.
Joseph Pelzman, head of the university’s Center of Excellence for the Economic Study of the Middle East and North Africa, sent his 49-page report, An Economic Plan for Rebuilding Gaza: A BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) Approach, to Trump advisers in July.
“I figured why don’t I write sort of an out-of-the-box perspective on how to fix Gaza after the war is finished,” Pelzman told the Israeli historian Kobby Barda on his podcast a month later. “The paper went to the Trump people because they were the ones who had an interest in it, not the Biden people. I was asked [by Trump’s team] to think outside the box on what do we do after [the war], as nobody was really talking about it.”
In his report, Pelzman laid out a sweeping proposal for the complete reconstruction of Gaza, much of which has been destroyed by Israeli bombardment, claiming the war offered an “opportunity for a new and fresh approach to an old problem”.
Pelzman imagines a mix of high-rise housing and “seafront property” facing the Mediterranean
The report uses phrases such as “out-of-the-box thinking“ and “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”, which were echoed last week by members of Trump’s administration, including Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary.
Pelzman, an American-Israeli academic who previously worked with the agency USAid on economic developments in China, explained that his Gaza plan “requires that the place be completely emptied out. I mean, literally emptied out, dug up from scratch.”
The professor recommends digging up the entire 365 sq km (141 sq miles) land mass and creating three four-kilometre buffer zones with Israel and neighbouring Egypt, much like the demilitarised zone between North Korea and South Korea.
On the eastern side, Pelzman imagines People’s Republic of China-style high-rise housing. The western side facing the Mediterranean should be turned into “seafront property” modelled on Saudi Arabia’s multibillion-dollar Red Sea Project. In between would be agricultural areas and greenhouses.
The plan suggests transferring Palestinians to Egypt
Control over Gaza has been one of the biggest flashpoints of the decades-long and intractable Arab-Israeli conflict. For Palestinians listening to Trump’s remarks, there will be unavoidable echoes of the nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic: the mass displacement of people during the creation of Israel in 1948.
In a phone call with Netanyahu after receiving Pelzman’s report, Trump was reported to have told the Israeli leader that Gaza is a “prime piece of real estate” and that it could be an ideal site to construct hotels. Netanyahu and the more extreme right-wing members of his coalition expressed support for the idea.
At a White House press conference with Neyanyahu last week, Trump suggested that the US “will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it.”
The president later said that America would not be investing any money, however, nor boots on the ground. In his latest comments, he said Palestinians would not have the right to return to Gaza if it is taken over and developed by the US.
Pelzman writes that there should be no restriction on the nearly two million “local residents to exit Gaza” during its reconstruction but does not fully address their right to return.
The estimated cost of the plan is between $1 trillion and $2 trillion
RAMZI ALKAHLUT/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES
He suggests that the US “can lean on Egypt” to accept displaced inhabitants because “Egypt is a bankrupt state” with significant debt owed to the US. Egypt has categorically refused.
Pelzman’s report suggests that the “Hamas experiment has failed” and that the security of Gaza, in the short run, must be assigned to “impartial partners who share the common interest of removing the militant group”.
Pelzman writes about the BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) method, a model used in developing countries. He suggests private-sector companies and organisations — nationality unclear — enter into investment partnerships with governmental entities, receiving a property lease “for 50 to 100 years”.
“Under this system, a private entity constructs and operates the project for several decades, after which ownership is transferred to a public authority”, the report continues. “During the operational period, the private entity is allowed to charge fees for the use of the infrastructure.”
Joseph Pelzman sent his report to Trump advisers in July
Under Pelzman’s plan, the Gaza Strip would be powered entirely by solar energy, traversed by a light rail system and serviced by air and seaports.
He estimates the cost will be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion and the project will take five to ten years to complete. In the longer term, Pelzman envisions a “three-sector” economy in Gaza, based on tourism, agriculture and technology.
On the question of governance, Pelzman suggested that “civil administrators” be brought into Gaza to establish a “rule of law as it is applied to property, contract, criminal and tort law under a market system.
“The sovereignty for the residents will be addressed only after the 50-year lease arrangement is complete, along with the formation of a robust civil administration,” he wrote.
He pointed to a number of examples of “investor-sponsored” civil governance structures: “From the US we have Panama and Puerto Rico, and from Great Britain we had Hong Kong”.
Some Middle East analysts have suggested that Trump’s plan, or any plan involving the removal of Palestinians with no guarantee of their right to return, would be in violation of international law as well as practically unworkable.
“Trump is going back to the economic development model while taking the Palestinian political grievances away,” said Marwa Maziad, a professor at the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland.