TEL AVIV—The most important political news item published by the Washington Post on Aug. 31 was barely reported in Israeli media. It was the transfer and annexation plan for Gaza, which, rather than seeing the Strip annexed directly as Israeli territory envisions its control instead being transferred to a colonial “investor partnership.”
This is a more detailed version of a scheme that has been circulating in various forms over the last several months. According to the Post, the real estate investment plan has been on the table since the end of April.
The plan, in essence, is very simple: Israel will complete its military takeover of all of Gaza, removing its people and bulldozing its neighborhoods. Despite the enormous human toll involved, the Israeli military would expel and destroy to the best of its ability.
This would then enable the transfer of the “property”—clear of “every person and object”—to an international real estate trust company established in agreement with the U.S. government.
U.S. and Israeli investors would be the central players, with the United Arab Emirates playing the role of key Arab partner. This is the current political future for Palestine being jointly pursued by the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government.
Gaza and its Palestinian residents are seen merely as objects, like in the good old days when empires divided up the world among themselves and transferred residents and assets from hand to hand.
Israel will not take permanent possession of the property, though, as that is seen as too complicated and controversial. Rather, it will transfer Gaza to a private company that will combine political and economic control.
There is precedent for this colonial maneuver in the past, with the British East India Company, which effectively ruled India on behalf of London, as the best example. It’s not the only one, though. Another British company was given the area along the Niger River in 1886 and controlled a significant part of present-day Nigeria. Then there was the Congo Free State, which was essentially a private company under the ownership and control of King Leopold II of Belgium.
Comparisons to interim arrangements after World War II being made by the plan’s supporters—for example in Germany, Japan, or the Pacific Islands—are ridiculous. What is being witnessed is, in many ways, a rerun of the days of classical imperialism.
Colonies can be taken over, and they can be traded. As the plan’s supporters explain, the Palestinians have no sovereignty, and as the land holder, Israel is entitled to transfer parts of the occupied territories to whomever it wants.
The supreme principle: Profit
Since World War I, it has not been seen as politically acceptable to simply transfer territories and peoples between imperial powers on a permanent basis. That is why the Gaza Strip is being transferred to a company that will supposedly hold it as a “trust” for ten years. What “ten years” is can be easily calculated if we recall, for example, the timetables of the Oslo Accords and when Israel pledged to withdraw from the occupied territories.
This new trust company is not to be bound by the norms of international relations or law, however; it will be loyal only to the highest principle: profit-making. Even from the poverty and hardship on display in Gaza, the investor class sees the possibility of making huge profits.
Developers have already explained that 30% of the Strip’s land is public land, which they will receive as a gift for their management services from the very beginning. As for the other 70%, multiple means are being devised to pry it from its nominal Palestinian owners and give it a façade of legitimacy.
Those Palestinians who get fed up with life in what remains of the Gaza Strip—and everything is being done to make living there impossible—and agree to leave “voluntarily” will receive a digital token in exchange for the rights to their property. That’s it. With this token, they will supposedly be able to “open a new life.” Where? Right now, the options are Libya, South Sudan, Ethiopia, or Somalia—a selection of countries mired in deep crisis and some in the process of political disintegration.
For the residents of Gaza who choose not to leave and are lucky enough to survive, the possibility is dangled that perhaps they will someday get an apartment in one of the future cities investors will build in the Gaza Strip.
In other words, the Palestinians will receive nothing in exchange for all their rights; they will give credit to investors who will take over their property. What will the digital token be worth in the real world? No one has an answer.
According to the plan, those leaving will also receive a severance package: $5,000 in cash for each person departing. It was also reported that the Palestinians will receive “food for a year.”
It is not clear from the Post what this means, but the incentive seems to also play the role of threat: Palestinians in camps in the Gaza Strip are essentially being told the food will run out in a year, so the time to think about leaving is right now.
This is an abridged and edited version of an article that originally appeared in Zo Haderekh.
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