On a December morning in central London, more than two dozen people from influential institutions across the Middle East, Europe and the United States gathered in a conference room to pursue an aspiration that, at the time, bordered on the absurd. . They were there to plan the long-term reconstruction and economic development of Gaza.
Gaza was under relentless bombardment by Israeli military forces in response to terrorist attacks launched by Hamas in October. Communities across the land were being reduced to rubble and tens of thousands of people had been killed. Families faced the immediacy of hunger, fear and pain.
However, at the meeting in London, members of the international establishment discussed how to eventually transform Gaza from a place defined by isolation and poverty to a Mediterranean commercial hub focused on trade, tourism and innovation, generating a middle class.
The group included senior officials from American and European economic development agencies, executives from Middle Eastern financial and construction companies, and two partners from the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Officially, they attended only as individuals, not as representatives of their institutions.
The plan they put together is far removed from the terrible reality Gaza faces today. Making it a reality would require the end of a war that has left the territory devastated, not to mention tens of billions of dollars in investments. It would also require a resolution to the monumental and entirely uncertain political question of who will eventually control Gaza, and then the cooperation of that authority. All of this makes the plan very far from being an action plan.
However, participants argue that the mere exercise of mapping out a more prosperous future has value because it can pave the way for projects once conditions are right, a notion that has driven such planning in conflict zones like Kuwait after it was invaded by Iraq and Ukraine.
“We are proposing to connect Gaza to the world in the long term,” said Chris Choa, founder and director of Outcomist, a London firm that designs large-scale urban development projects, and one of the initial conveners of the group, known as Emerging Palestine.
Among those involved are Hashim Shawa, president of Bank of Palestine, a commercial bank; Samer Khoury, CEO of Consolidated Contractors International, a construction company engaged in major projects throughout the Middle East; and Mohammed Abukhaizaran, a board member of Arab Hospitals Group, a medical provider in the West Bank. All would potentially have a stake in the eventual reconstruction work.
“As soon as the war started, my team and I started developing a plan to build a facility in Gaza as soon as the war is over,” Abukhaizaran said in an interview.
The group is clear that the most urgent task is the delivery of food, water, healthcare and emergency shelter to the residents of Gaza, who are now facing a catastrophe. But the main objective of his plan is the reconstruction that would take place over the following decades.
“The Gaza war must end immediately and there will be an incredible and immediate humanitarian effort,” Abukhaizaran said. “But we must also think long-term about building a better future for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”
The initiative, one of several under discussion, has gained interest and advice from major international financial organizations, including the World Bank, said a senior agency official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. The bank sees the plan as a useful contribution towards a strategy that could generate jobs in Gaza by integrating the territory into the global economy.
Representatives from U.S. government agencies attended workshops on Emerging Palestine and offered advice on the details of the plan, a senior U.S. official said, also speaking on condition of not being named. The American commitment to the initiative has been driven by the assumption that greater economic opportunities in Gaza are needed to undermine popular support for Hamas, the official added.
The plan focuses on a number of major projects, including a deep-water port, a desalination plant to provide drinking water, an online healthcare service and a transport corridor connecting Gaza to the West Bank. A reconstruction and development fund would oversee future initiatives.
The most progressive components, such as lowering customs barriers to trade and introducing a new currency in place of the Israeli shekel, entail the eventual establishment of Palestinian autonomy, a step that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised. resist. He has also set aside the prospect that future governance of Gaza could include a role for the Palestinian Authority, the most obvious potential partner for the reconstruction initiative.
The enormous price tag of any reconstruction is another impediment. The cost of damage to Gaza’s crucial infrastructure has reached $18.5 billion, according to a recent estimate by the World Bank and the United Nations. Half the population is on the brink of famine and more than a million people are homeless.
Who could provide such financing is one of the most important variables. A previous development plan for the Palestinian territories pushed by the Trump administration in 2019 envisioned substantial investment from Gulf Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The new initiative has yet to engage with Gulf countries, Choa said.
The development imperative in Gaza predates the current war. The unemployment rate in the territory exceeded 45 percent in 2022, according to the World Bank. According to the International Monetary Fund, more than half of the population lived in poverty.
While visions for modern transportation systems may now seem tangential to Gaza’s essential needs, the plan is guided by the assumption that even temporary structures like emergency housing and healthcare facilities must be carefully sited to avoid wasting possibilities. future.
“Temporary tends to become permanent very quickly,” Choa said. “Someone says, ‘We’re going to put this big refugee camp right here,’ but it could be exactly where in the future they want to put a wastewater treatment plant or a transit line. “Then you create an obstacle.”
Choa, 64, has spent much of his international architectural career wrestling with those details. After the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, he served on a commission tasked with outlining the future of Lower Manhattan. He later lived and worked in China, where he oversaw master plans in major urban areas. After moving to London in 2006, he continued that work in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.
He first encountered a detailed plan for Gaza in 2015 through work commissioned by Palestinian business interests. He led several missions to Gaza, meeting with the Palestinian Authority and the arm of the Israel Defense Forces that administered the territory. But the pandemic and Israeli security concerns halted the effort.
In the wake of Hamas attacks on Israel in October, he sought to revive the project, joining forces with Baron Frankal, executive director of the Portland Trust, a London-based organization that pursues economic opportunities for Palestinians.
Following the December meeting in London, an expanded group of 58 met in Washington in early March. A meeting was recently held in Ramallah, a city in the West Bank. Another meeting is planned in Tel Aviv in early June.
The group has informed the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Frankal said. One member of the initiative, Wael Zakout, a former World Bank official, recently joined the cabinet of the incoming Palestinian government.
The group has not engaged with Hamas, which has overseen Gaza since 2007 and is widely condemned as a terrorist organization.
“If Hamas remains a player, people are not going to invest tens of billions of dollars,” said Stephen Byers, a former British cabinet secretary in Tony Blair’s government, who attended the London meeting.
The ideas that have emerged from the workshops extend into the next quarter of a century. These include building a state-of-the-art football stadium and elevating the existing football team to a more internationally competitive level, and creating a strategy to foster a Palestinian film industry.
The deep-sea port would be established on an artificial island built from the nearly 30 million tonnes of rubble and rubble expected to cover the territory when the conflict ends, and its removal is expected to take up to a decade.
The plan proposes establishing a degree-granting Reconstruction Technical University in northern Gaza that would attract students from around the world. They would study strategies to emerge from the disaster and boost development, using postwar Gaza as a living laboratory.
The destruction is so extensive that the usual means of administering aid and overseeing reconstruction will be inadequate, the World Bank official said.
US government agencies face legal restrictions on working directly with the Palestinian Authority. Other institutions are reluctant to transact with the Palestinian Authority given its reputation for corruption. All of this makes private companies critical elements of the plan, even though they will also have to deal with the risks of investing in a highly uncertain climate.
While the most important projects require clarity on the future political administration of Gaza, other initiatives, such as those aimed at encouraging small businesses, could begin as soon as military activities cease.
“I want to focus on how we open the bakery, how we get the factories up and running,” said Jim Pickup, executive director of the Middle East Investment Initiative, a nonprofit that finances development projects. “Each truck that goes to remove debris is in itself a small business that supports a family.”