{"id":314799,"date":"2025-09-06T05:30:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T05:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=314799"},"modified":"2025-09-07T07:24:45","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T07:24:45","slug":"financially-feasible-but-impossible-why-the-gaza-riviera-is-doomed-to-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=314799","title":{"rendered":"‘Financially feasible, but impossible’: Why the ‘Gaza Riviera’ is doomed to fail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sean Matthews \u2013 Middle East Eye Sept 4, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

An Israeli plan that envisions turning Gaza<\/a> into a Dubai-like enclave would not only provide cover for the forced displacement of Palestinians but be economically unviable to begin with – unless investors are willing to throw caution to the wind, experts say.<\/p>\n

The United Nations estimates it will cost around $600m just to clear the roughly 42 million tonnes of debris in Gaza – and that is before work begins on laying the foundations, sewage, water, and electricity for a futuristic city of gleaming skyscrapers, canals, and AI data centres.<\/p>\n

The ferocity of Israel\u2019s bombing of Gaza has been compared<\/a>, and likely\u00a0surpassed<\/a>,\u00a0the Allies’ bombing of Nazi Germany during World War II.<\/p>\n

Mark Jarzombek, an architectural history professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied post-WWII reconstruction, said the comparisons stop there.<\/p>\n

\u201cGermany was rebuilt by the Marshall Plan,\u201d Jarzombek told Middle East Eye, referring to the US-backed programme that provided loans to western Europe for its reconstruction after the war.<\/p>\n

\u201c[But] the Marshall Plan was funded largely by the industrial nature of the German state. Germany became an export powerhouse to pay back the loans. What did Gaza have before the war: olives and fish?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is what kind of state-backed financial institutions will fund this?\u201d He said.<\/p>\n

‘Sadistic cover’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A 38-page slide deck of the plan, first reported<\/a> by The Financial Times, was published in full<\/a>\u00a0by The Washington Post on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The proposal was reportedly led by Michael Eisenberg, an Israeli-American venture capitalist, and Liran Tancman, an Israeli tech entrepreneur and former military intelligence officer.<\/p>\n

The proposal is being taken seriously by some because the two have a track record of projects taking off in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The duo was part of an informal group of Israeli officials and businesspeople that first conceived of the now widely discredited Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in late 2023.<\/p>\n

The plan echoes one put forward by US<\/a> President Donald Trump – which he has since largely stopped discussing in public – calling for the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Under the proposal, Palestinians would be encouraged to \u201cvoluntarily\u201d depart Gaza to a restricted zone with temporary housing.<\/p>\n

Jarzombek said the plan was \u201csadistic cover\u201d for Israel\u2019s<\/a> plan to turn Gaza into a \u201cshatter zone\u201d that Israel completely levels.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people on the ground don\u2019t matter. First, the Palestinians are going to be killed and then moved out,\u201d he told MEE. \u201cBecause in the name of development, no one will care for displaced people.\u201d<\/p>\n

MEE unpacked the more fantastical elements of the plan, including an Elon Musk smart city, but one figure that stood out was the $100bn price tag. The authors say the plan would require no US funding and instead rely on \u201cpublic and private-sector investment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some analysts say the price tag to create a city without too much splash could be accurate based on other projects in the region.<\/p>\n

For example, the UAE paid $35bn for development rights to a wide swath of Egypt\u2019s Mediterranean coast. The cost of Egypt\u2019s new administrative capital, the desert city built from scratch, is estimated<\/a> at $60bn.<\/p>\n

Jim Krane, a Middle East expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute, said the Israeli plan is clearly being pitched to the oil-rich Gulf, but the authors might be disappointed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the oil price where it is now, there isn\u2019t a lot of foreign capital for the rebuilding of Gaza. The Gulf monarchies have been burned before. They get called on to rebuild, and the Israelis destroy it again,\u201d said Krane, the author of City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia<\/a>, the Arab world\u2019s only G-20 economy, is struggling to meet its own project deadlines amid lower oil prices for the Vision 2030 plan, which includes plenty of futuristic projects.<\/p>\n

The kingdom is relying on record debt issuance to make headway and is scaling back other projects like Neom.<\/p>\n

Is ‘Dubaification’ feasable?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

But the authors of the paper are, in a sense, channelling the wider “Dubaification” trend that has swept the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Downtown Beirut was redeveloped after Lebanon\u2019s civil war by Solidere, a company that bought out locals on the cheap. Empty malls and glitzy towers have sprung up across Jordan<\/a>, Tunisia<\/a>\u00a0and Egypt<\/a> despite those countries’ economic woes.<\/p>\n

Dubai’s construction came in waves. A small amount of oil revenue helped build apartment blocks, ports, and airports in the 1980s, but the city-state is generally energy-poor.<\/p>\n

Its super-growth and economic diversification over the last 20 years were turbocharged with wealth from abroad, often seeking a home to avoid taxes.<\/p>\n

If the Israelis do succeed in forcibly displacing the Palestinians, the lack of productive enterprise or resources in Gaza would not necessarily prohibit the construction of a few gleaming towers.<\/p>\n

Israel’s own real estate sector relies on diaspora investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a feasible model,” Yasser Elsheshtawy, an expert on urban spaces in the Middle East and an adjunct professor of architecture at Columbia University, told MEE.<\/p>\n

\u201cGaza is different than the rest because there is a genocide going on [but] money is not the issue,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s the political and social repercussions. Once Gaza has been erased from existence, it is prime real estate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsheshtawy\u00a0said Saudi Arabia is the wrong country to look towards. He believes investors from the UAE \u201care just waiting to jump in”.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s about making profits and selling these urban assets to global investors. It will be done at the expense of the local Gazan population,” he said.<\/p>\n

To be sure, there would be less criticism if the Gaza “Riviera plan” came with the acknowledgement of a Palestinian state and was built around those aspirations with the buy-in of Palestinians, experts say.<\/p>\n

“Thinking of a future for Gaza in the context of post-war reconstruction is good, but it’s the wrong players doing this,”\u00a0Jarzombek said.<\/p>\n

The Israeli plan rests on several deeply flawed assumptions, which means the price tag is not the prohibitive element of the deal.<\/p>\n

The first is that Hamas will be totally removed from Gaza as a political and military force. That is something that some of the US’s closest Arab partners, including Egypt, have told the US is delusional.<\/p>\n

The group has continued to demonstrate its ability to wage sophisticated guerrilla-style attacks on Israeli soldiers after 23 months of conflict.<\/p>\n

The plan’s authors also make clear their goal is to drive out the Palestinians from Gaza. In their pitch to “investors”, they say the costs of this Dubai-style city will decrease for every Palestinian who leaves.<\/p>\n

The authors calculate that $23,000 will be saved\u00a0for every one percent of the population that relocates. They argue that investors should give each Palestinian in Gaza $5,000 and subsidise their rent in another country for four years, as well as their food for one year, to forcibly displace them.<\/p>\n

If you ask in terms of finances and construction, this city can be made,” Abdalrahman Kittana, an architect and professor at\u00a0Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank, told MEE. “If they erase everything, yes. In order to create something like this, they need investors who will be fine with ethnic cleansing.”<\/p>\n

Kittana said comparisons with Dubai or other futuristic cities being constructed in the Middle East miss the point.<\/p>\n

“Maybe you go to Dubai, because the people of the UAE have invited you there with a business promise. What people of this land would invite others?”<\/p>\n

\u201cWho are the people that are going to inhabit and use these apartments? It\u2019s almost impossible that you will invite people from Italy to live in a place that everyone has seen ethnically cleansed,” added Kittana, who is also a postdoctoral fellow at Tampere University in Finland.<\/p>\n

“Properties are bought and sold, but actually, in Palestine and in Gaza particularly, this is not achievable because the place has a meaning beyond money. You can\u2019t buy the relationship with the land,\u201d he told MEE.<\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plans to build a \u2018Gaza Riviera\u2019 on the ruins of Palestine look increasingly unlikely<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":314696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[66,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Economics","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=314799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314800,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314799\/revisions\/314800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/314696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=314799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=314799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=314799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}