US touts ‘New Gaza’ filled with luxury real estate

AFP | Davos

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US officials yesterday presented their vision for a “New Gaza” that would turn the shattered Palestinian territory into a glitzy resort of skyscrapers by the sea, saying the transformation could emerge in three years.

The war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, left much of the Palestinian territory damaged or destroyed and forced most of its residents to flee their homes.

“We’re going to be very successful in Gaza. It’s going to be a great thing to watch,” President Donald Trump said while presenting his controversial “Board of Peace” conflict-resolution body in Davos.

“I’m a real estate person at heart... a n d I said, look at this location on the sea. Look at this beautiful piece of property. What it could be for so many people,” he said at the World Economic Forum.

His son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has no official title but is one of Trump’s envoys for the Gaza ceasefire, said his “master plan” aimed for “catastrophic success”.

With a slide showing dozens of shiny terraced apartment towers overlooking a tree-lined promenade, he promised a Mediterranean utopia rising from the scarred Gaza landscape.

“In the Middle East they build cities like this, you know for two or three million people, they build this in three years,” Kushner said.

“And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen.” He touted investments of at least $25 billion to rebuild destroyed infrastructure and public services.

Within 10 years, the territory’s GDP would be $10 billion, and households would enjoy average income of $13,000 a year thanks to “100-percent full employment and opportunity for everybody there”, he said.

“It could be a hope. It could be a destination, have a lot of industry and really be a place that the people there can thrive.”

‘Amazing’ opportunities

Kushner said the so-called National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) had enlisted help from Israeli real estate developer Yakir Gabay.

“He’s volunteered to do this not for profit, really because of his heart he wants to do this,” Kushner said.

“So the next 100 days, we’re going to continue to just be heads down and focused on making sure this is implemented.”

Trump had earlier in the conflict floated his vision of turning Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East”, sparking outrage around the world.

Notably absent from Kushner’s presentation was Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose country had spearheaded in 2025 a reconstruction plan for Gaza supported by Arab nations and welcomed by the European Union.

According to a brief statement from his office, Sisi flew home at dawn on Thursday, hours after he and Trump exchanged praise in a tete-a-tete, with the US president calling him “a great leader, a great guy”.

Ali Shaath, Gaza’s recently appointed administrator under Trump’s “Board of Peace”, has said the Egyptian plan was the “foundation” of his committee’s reconstruction project.

A top UN official warned this month that Gazans were living in “inhumane” conditions even as the US-backed truce entered its second phase.

Entire neighbourhoods, hospitals and schools have been heavily damaged or destroyed, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to live in makeshift shelters.

Kushner said 85% of Gaza’s economic output had been aid for a long time.

“That’s not sustainable. It doesn’t give these people dignity. It doesn’t give them hope,” he said.

“We’ll announce a lot of the contributions that will be made in a couple of weeks in Washington,” he said.

“There’ll be amazing investment opportunities.”