One December morning in central London, more than 20 people drawn from influential institutions in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States gathered in a conference room to pursue an aspiration that at the time bordered on the insane. They were there to plan for Gaza's reconstruction and long-term economic development.
The Gaza Strip has been under relentless shelling by Israeli forces in response to terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas in October. Communities across the territory were reduced to rubble and tens of thousands of people were killed. Families faced impending hunger, fear, and grief.
But at a conference in London, members of the international ruling class announced that they would finally transform Gaza from a place defined by isolation and poverty into a Mediterranean commercial hub centered on trade, tourism, and innovation, with a middle-class We discussed how to create
The group included senior officials from U.S. and European economic development agencies, executives from financial and construction companies in the Middle East, and two partners from the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Officially, they were present only as individuals, not as representatives of the organization.
The plans they created are a far cry from the dire reality facing Gaza today. Making that a reality will require an end to the war that has devastated the territory, not to mention tens of billions of dollars in investments. It would also require the cooperation of its authorities and the resolution of the highly uncertain and highly uncertain political question of who will ultimately control Gaza. All this considered, this plan is far from a blueprint for action.
But participants argue that the mere act of planning for a more prosperous future is valuable. This is because if the conditions are right, the path to the project can be prepared. This kind of thinking drives such plans in conflict zones like Kuwait after it was invaded by Iraq and Ukraine.
“We are proposing to connect Gaza with the world in the long term,” said the group's first convener, founder and director of Outcomist, a London firm that designs large-scale urban development projects. said Chris Choa, one of them. Emerging Palestine.
Those involved include Hashim Shawa, chairman of the commercial bank Palestine Bank. Summer Cooley, CEO of Consolidated Contractors International, a construction company that works on large-scale projects throughout the Middle East. Mohammed Abukaizaran, director of Arab Hospital Group, a medical provider in the West Bank; Everyone will potentially have a stake in the final reconstruction effort.
“As soon as the war started, my team and I started making plans to build a facility in Gaza as soon as the war ended,” Abu Qaizalan said in an interview.
The organization has made clear that the most urgent need is to deliver food, water, medical care and emergency shelter to Gaza's residents, who are currently battling the catastrophe. But the main focus of their plans is on the rebuilding that will unfold over the next several decades.
“The war in Gaza must end immediately and an incredible humanitarian effort will be undertaken immediately,” Abu Qaizalan said. “But we also need to think long-term about building a better future for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”
The initiative, one of several being discussed, has the interest and advice of major international funding agencies, including the World Bank, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. said a senior official of the agency who spoke. The Bank considers this plan to be a useful contribution to a strategy that can create jobs in the Gaza Strip by integrating it into the global economy.
Representatives from U.S. government agencies attended the Palestine Emerging Workshop and provided advice on the details of the plan, a senior U.S. government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. involvement in the initiative is driven by the assumption that greater economic opportunities in Gaza are needed to undermine public support for Hamas, the official added.
The plan centers around a series of major projects, including a deep-water port, a desalination plant to provide drinking water, online medical services, and a transportation corridor connecting Gaza and the West Bank. The Reconstruction and Development Fund will oversee future operations.
The most forward-looking elements, such as reducing tariff barriers to trade and introducing a new currency to replace the Israeli shekel, presuppose the eventual establishment of Palestinian self-government, which requires Israel's Benjamin Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to resist. He also dismissed the prospect that future governance of Gaza could include a role for the Palestinian Authority, the most obvious potential partner in the reconstruction initiative.
The huge cost of rebuilding is also an obstacle. Recent estimates from the World Bank and the United Nations put the cost of damage to Gaza's critical infrastructure at $18.5 billion. Half the population is at risk of starvation and more than 1 million people are homeless.
Who provides such funding is one of the biggest variables. A previous development plan for the Palestinian territories, advanced by the Trump administration in 2019, envisioned significant investment from Persian Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Choa said the new initiative does not yet involve Gulf states.
The urgent need for development in Gaza predates the current war. The unemployment rate in the region will exceed 45% in 2022, according to the World Bank. According to the International Monetary Fund, more than half of the population lives in poverty.
Although the vision for a modern transportation system may now seem unrelated to Gaza's essential needs, the plan is to avoid wasting future potential by creating temporary structures such as emergency housing and medical facilities. It is based on the premise that even objects must be carefully placed.
“What is temporary tends to quickly become permanent,” Choa says. “Some people say, 'We're going to build a big refugee camp here,' but that might be exactly where we want to put a sewage treatment plant or a transport line in the future. That creates a roadblock.”
Choa, 64, has spent much of his career as an international architect grappling with these details. After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, he served on a commission tasked with charting the future of Lower Manhattan. He then lived and worked in China, where he oversaw master planning for major urban areas. After he moved to London in 2006, he continued these activities in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.
He first worked on a detailed plan for the Gaza Strip in 2015 through work commissioned by Palestinian business interests. He led several missions to Gaza and met with the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Defense Forces units that administer the territory. But the effort was halted due to the pandemic and Israeli concerns about safety.
After Hamas attacked Israel in October, he sought to revive the project by working with Baron Frankal, chief executive of the London-based organization that pursues the project, the Portland Trust. Economic opportunities for Palestinians.
Following a December meeting in London, an expanded group of 58 people gathered in Washington in early March. A meeting was recently held in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Another meeting is scheduled for early June in Tel Aviv.
Frankal said the group had briefed the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. One of the initiative's members, former World Bank official Wael Zakut, recently joined the cabinet of the incoming Palestinian government.
The group has no ties to Hamas, which has monitored Gaza since 2007 and is widely condemned as a terrorist organization.
“If Hamas was still a party, people wouldn't invest tens of billions of dollars,” said Stephen Byers, a former British minister in Tony Blair's government who attended the London conference.
The ideas that emerged from the workshop would spread over the next quarter century. These include building state-of-the-art soccer stadiums, elevating existing soccer teams to a more internationally competitive level, and developing strategies to encourage the Palestinian film industry.
The deep-sea port will be located on an artificial island made of the approximately 30 million tons of rubble and rubble that is expected to cover the territory after each conflict ends, and will take as long as 10 years to remove. It is expected.
The plan proposes establishing a degree-granting Reconstruction University of Technology in northern Gaza, which would attract students from around the world. They will use post-war Gaza as a living laboratory to study strategies to recover from disaster and promote development.
The extent of the destruction is so extensive that normal means of delivering aid and overseeing reconstruction are inadequate, World Bank officials said.
U.S. government agencies face legal restrictions on working directly with the Palestinian Authority. Other agencies are reluctant to do business with the Palestinian Authority because of its reputation for corruption. This makes private companies a key element of the plan, even as they deal with investment risks in highly uncertain conditions.
While the largest projects require clarity on Gaza's future political management, other initiatives, such as those aimed at encouraging small and medium-sized businesses, could begin once military activity ceases.
“The focus is on how to open a bakery, how to run a factory,” said Jim Pickup, CEO of the Middle East Investment Initiative, a nonprofit organization that funds development projects. I want to,” he said. “Every truck that removes debris is a small business that provides for families.”
