The Wall Street Journal reported that Jared Kushner and real estate developer-diplomat Steve Witkoff have developed plans for the reconstruction of Gaza as an elegant, luxurious resort.
The story, if you can open the WSJ, features drawings of a beachfront ringed by futuristic high-rise luxury buildings, harbors with yachts, a dreamscape replacing a devastated landscape. It’s reminiscent of the video released by the White House last year that showed Trump and Netanyahu stretched out on beach chairs on the Gaza beach, enjoying their drinks in the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
The curious part of this fantasy is the claim that that this the cost will be $112 billion.
The presentationhas been shared with the leaders of oil-rich Arab nations.
The unsolved problem: what to do with the 2 million homeless Gazans.
WASHINGTON—Beachside luxury resorts. High-speed rail. AI-optimized smart grids.
Welcome to “Project Sunrise,” the Trump administration’s pitch to foreign governments and investors to turn Gaza’s rubble into a futuristic coastal destination.
A team led by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, two top White House aides, developed a draft proposal to convert the bombed-out enclave into a gleaming metropolis. In 32 pages of PowerPoint slides, replete with images of coastal high-rises alongside charts and cost tables, the plan outlines steps to take Gaza residents from tents to penthouses and from poverty to prosperity.
The presentation is labeled “sensitive but unclassified,” and doesn’t go into details about which countries or companies would fund Gaza’s rebuilding. Nor does it specify where precisely the 2 million displaced Palestinians would live during reconstruction. The U.S. has shown the slides to prospective donor countries, U.S. officials said, including wealthy Gulf kingdoms, Turkey and Egypt….
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Together with the report of an Israeli government official suggesting that a settlement will be rebuilt in northern Gaza, this report lays out the colonial ambitions of the Trump administration. The American right wing sees no problem with colonialism, either moral or pragmatic. A Century’s worth of experiencing the ill effects of colonialism and its child, imperialism, has taught nothing.
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The “colonial ambitions of the Trump administration” are simply the continuation of U.S. unwavering, unquestioning support for Israel’s colonial ambitions since the late 1800s. Neither party has any problem with Israel’s colonialism.
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DJT and his co-profiteers know how to monetize real estate. However, when land is seized by politically driven motives, it is bound to cause resentment. Have we learning nothing from 1948? Hamas appears to have a long memory and would be unlikely to forget this loss. Kushner may have a hard time finding investors for this project, even if it is a beautiful development if it is plagued by terrorism. Trump wants to commit $60 billion US dollars to this development without specifying how he is getting the money. There is no clear plan about what to do with approximately two million Palestinians. What could possibly go wrong?
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