ANALYSIS — A Middle East Monaco? That was what former President Donald Trump recently floated for post-war Gaza — but there are reasons why the concept has yet to gain traction.
Prompted by a conservative radio host earlier this month, the Republican presidential nominee and real estate mogul suggested the obliterated strip one day could rival the ritzy city-state that has become a playground for the world’s rich and famous along the French Riviera.
The House and Senate had been on a recess for over a week by the time Trump made the declaration to Hugh Hewitt on Oct. 7, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ deadly attack inside Israel. Many Democratic members have said the ultimate solution in the region should be two states: Israel alongside a sovereign Palestine.
Many GOP lawmakers have said that would be untenable to Israeli leaders and citizens, describing a post-war Gaza that likely would be occupied by the Israeli Defense Forces. But none have suggested Gaza be remade with luxury hotels and resorts, high-end shops and championship golf courses.
A Senate Democratic aide suggested this week that a plan to build a Monaco South would not be considered “serious.”
New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is slated to become the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the next Congress, replacing the retiring Chairman Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland. “Sen. Shaheen is willing to review serious proposals that come before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” the aide wrote in an email.
So far, Israeli demands to control certain sections and thoroughfares inside Gaza once the fighting ends have been rejected by the other side.
“Jared Kushner and anyone else suggesting that the Israeli government should ethnically cleanse millions of Palestinians from their land for the sake of beachfront property is either genocidal or delusional — or both,” Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., wrote in a statement prepared for Roll Call. He was referring to Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser.
Kushner said during a Feb. 15 interview at Harvard University that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable.”
“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up. … I am not sure there is much left of Gaza at this point,” he said.
But CAIR’s Mitchell said “the Palestinian people want freedom and justice in Gaza, not a beach resort for Western tourists,” adding: “No economy can thrive under a military blockade that bombs children playing on the beaches of Gaza and shoots down Palestinians using boats to catch fish offshore. Justice and freedom are prerequisites for wealth and tourism.”
In recent days, Trump’s notion of a resort-transformed Gaza largely has been surpassed by his latest antics and statements.
That includes fanning the flames of misinformation about federal hurricane relief efforts in North Carolina, where threats have been made against government aid workers. The 78-year-old former president on Monday evening made clear he did not want to answer many questions during a town hall in the crucial battleground of Pennsylvania, instead turning the event into a music party.
‘The best everything’
Still, Trump and his family own businesses that could benefit from Gaza as a glitzy destination for celebrities and millionaires. That kind of strip would need hotels, resorts, golf courses and high-end retail spaces — just the kind of things The Trump Organization has built around the world.
Hewitt did not try to dissuade the idea of Trump properties there, asking the Republican nominee during the Oct. 7 interview: “You know how to build things. Gaza is in ruins. Could Gaza be Monaco if it was rebuilt the right way?”
Trump responded by declaring “it could be better than Monaco — it has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything.”
“It’s got, it is the best, I’ve said it for years,” he added. “You know, I’ve been there, and it’s rough. It’s a rough place, before the, you know, before all of the attacks and before the back and forth what’s happened over the last couple of years.” (“Lacking evidence,” nonpartisan fact-checker PolitiFact concluded of the visit claim, “we rate Trump’s statement False.”)
Trump also did little to downplay interest in helping develop post-war Gaza.
“You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place — the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate. It could be so beautiful,” he told Hewitt. “It could be the best thing in the Middle East, but it could be one of the best places in the world.”
Hewitt’s version of Gaza as a resort destination seemed to give the surviving Palestinian population some kind of role in all the new possible construction and day-to-day operations. Trump did not mention the Gazan population.
“Could someone make Gaza into something that all the Palestinian people would be proud of, would want to live in,” Hewitt asked. “Would benefit them?”
One major requirement that was unclear from the interview is who would foot the bill. Hewitt asked Trump if he could “get your partners, like UAE, Bahrain and possibly Saudi to help you, and Egypt, to help you in Gaza, if you’re president again, to build it the right way and get rid of [Hamas]?”
Trump replied only, “Yeah, yeah” before contending Iran — which U.S. intelligence officials reportedly now contend wants to assassinate him — “wanted to make a deal so bad until we had that phony [2020] election”
‘No sustained effort’
The comments from Trump and Kushner came amid the Biden administration’s uneven handling of the conflict and its seemingly declining sway over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And the administration has only discussed vague parameters of what a post-war Gaza would look like.
“There has been no sustained effort that brings together the collective resources and plans, in part because the Biden administration has been engaged in reactive crisis diplomacy,” according to Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. “But the long-term planning and diplomatic efforts remain in their nascent stages, as the crisis diplomacy focused on achieving a cease-fire and hostage release has understandably been the higher priority.”
Katulis gave the Biden administration a C- in the Middle East Institute’s April and July Middle East policy report card. That grade has been downgraded to a F.
White House spokesperson Emilie Simons said last week the administration has stressed the “need for peace in the region so people can return safely to their homes.” That stock line increasingly seems detached from reality. Such a scenario likely won’t be possible for some time — and many Gazans’ homes have been destroyed.
“Despite Israel significantly destroying Hamas’ capabilities, the group is still fighting Israel in Gaza and elsewhere,” Laura James, a former adviser for the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and the European Union, wrote for Oxford Analytica. (FiscalNote, the parent company of CQ and Roll Call, owns Oxford Analytica.)
“Hamas’ military capability is undoubtedly severely degraded. It will seek survival, operating in a more limited manner and likely avoiding direct confrontation to reduce losses,” James wrote. “Dire humanitarian conditions will help it recruit, and it will exploit opportunities to regroup forces wherever it can. Meanwhile, Israel will continue striking and eliminating Hamas infrastructure and operatives wherever they emerge.”
Fighting and destruction in Gaza could be ratcheted further, depending on how Hamas responds to the what senior Israeli officials said Thursday was the killing of its leader, Yahya Sinwar.
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