On a December morning in central London, more than two dozen people from influential institutions in the Middle East, Europe and the United States gathered in a conference room to pursue a goal that, at that moment, bordered on the absurd. They were there to plan Gaza’s reconstruction and long-term economic development.
Gaza was bombarded relentlessly by Israeli forces in response to Hamas’ terrorist attacks in October. Across the area, communities were reduced to rubble and tens of thousands of people were killed. Families faced the immediacy of hunger, fear and grief.
But at the meeting in London, members of the international establishment discussed how Gaza can ultimately be transformed from a place of isolation and poverty into a Mediterranean commercial hub focused on trade, tourism and innovation and producing a middle class.
The group included senior officials from American 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 only took part as individuals, not as representatives of their institutions.
The plan they put forward is a far cry from the terrible reality facing Gaza today. Making this a reality would require the end of a war that has devastated the territory, not to mention tens of billions of dollars in investments. It would also require a resolution of the monumental and entirely uncertain political question of who ultimately controls Gaza, and then the cooperation of that authority. All of this makes the plan far from a blueprint for action.
Still, participants contend that planning for a more prosperous future alone has value because it can pave the way for projects once conditions are right – a notion that has supported such planning in conflict zones such as Kuwait following invasions by Iraq and Ukraine has advanced.
“We are proposing to connect Gaza to the world in the long term,” said Chris Choa, founder and director of Outcomist, a London company that designs large urban development projects, and one of the first organizers of the group known as Palestine Emerges.
Those involved include Hashim Shawa, chairman of the Bank of Palestine, a commercial bank; Samer Khoury, managing director of Consolidated Contractors International, a construction company involved in major projects throughout the Middle East; and Mohammed Abukhaizaran, board member of Arab Hospitals Group, a medical provider in the West Bank. All would potentially be involved in the eventual reconstruction work.
“As soon as the war began, my team and I began developing a plan to build a facility in Gaza as soon as the war ends,” Mr. Abukhaizaran said in an interview.
The group recognizes that the most urgent task is to provide food, water, health care and emergency shelter to Gazans now grappling with disaster. However, the focus of their plan is on reconstruction, which would take place over the following decades.
“The Gaza war must end immediately and there will be an incredible and immediate humanitarian effort,” Mr. Abukhaizaran 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 under discussion, has drawn interest and advice from major international financing organizations, including the World Bank, a senior agency official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak, said publicly to speak. The bank sees the plan as a useful contribution to a strategy that could create jobs in Gaza by integrating the territory into the global economy.
Representatives from U.S. government agencies attended Palestine Emerging workshops and provided advice on the details of the plan, a senior American official said, on condition that their names not be used. American involvement in the initiative is based on the assumption that greater economic opportunities in Gaza are necessary to undermine popular support for Hamas, the official added.
The plan focuses on a number of large projects, including a deep-sea port, a desalination plant to provide drinking water, an online health service and a transport corridor linking Gaza to the West Bank. A Reconstruction and Development Fund would oversee future ventures.
The most forward-looking components, such as reducing tariff barriers to trade and introducing a new currency to replace the Israeli shekel, assume the eventual establishment of Palestinian autonomy, a move that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to oppose. He also brushed aside the prospect that Gaza’s future government could include a role for the Palestinian Authority, the most obvious potential partner for the reconstruction initiative.
Another obstacle is the enormous price of a conversion. A recent estimate by the World Bank and the United Nations puts the damage to Gaza’s critical infrastructure at $18.5 billion. Half the population is on the brink of famine and more than a million people are homeless.
Who might provide those funds is one of the biggest variables. A previous Trump administration development plan for the Palestinian territories in 2019 included significant investment from Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The new initiative still needs to work with Gulf states, Mr Choa said.
The pressure to develop in Gaza predates the current war. According to the World Bank, the unemployment rate in the territory was more than 45 percent in 2022. According to the International Monetary Fund, more than half of the population lived in poverty.
While visions of modern transportation systems may now seem peripheral to Gaza’s basic needs, the plan is based on the assumption that even temporary structures such as shelters and health facilities must be carefully placed so as not to squander future opportunities.
“Temporary tends to become permanent very quickly,” Mr Choa said. “Someone says, ‘We’re going to build this big refugee camp right here,’ but that’s exactly where they want to build a sewage treatment plant or a transit pipeline in the future. Then you create an obstacle.”
Mr. Choa, 64, has spent much of his international career as an architect dealing with such details. After the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, he served on a commission to chart the future of Lower Manhattan. He later lived and worked in China, where he oversaw master plans for large urban areas. After moving to London in 2006, he continued this work in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.
In 2015, he first looked at a detailed plan for Gaza on behalf of Palestinian business interests. He led several missions to Gaza and met with the Palestinian Authority and the Israel Defense Forces arm that administered the area. But the pandemic and Israeli security concerns put an end to the effort.
After Hamas’ attacks on Israel in October, he tried to revive the project by teaming up with Baron Frankal, chief executive of the Portland Trust, a London-based organization pursuing the project economic opportunities for Palestinians.
After the December meeting in London, an expanded group of 58 people met in Washington in early March. A meeting was recently held in Ramallah, a city in the West Bank. Another meeting is planned for early June in Tel Aviv.
The group had informed the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Mr. Frankal said. One member of the initiative, Wael Zakout, a former World Bank official, recently joined the cabinet of the new Palestinian government.
The group has not engaged Hamas, which has monitored Gaza since 2007 and is widely condemned as a terrorist organization.
“If Hamas still plays a role, people will not invest tens of billions of dollars,” said Stephen Byers, a former British cabinet secretary in the Tony Blair-led government who attended the London meeting.
The ideas that emerged from the workshops will extend into the next quarter century. These include building a state-of-the-art football stadium and elevating the existing football team to a more internationally competitive level, as well as developing a strategy to promote a Palestinian film industry.
The deep-water port would be built on an artificial island made up of the nearly 30 million tons of rubble and debris that are expected to cover the area after the conflict ends. Removal is expected to take up to a decade.
The plan calls for the establishment of a degree-granting Technical University for Reconstruction in northern Gaza that will attract students from around the world. They would explore strategies to emerge from disaster and advance development, using postwar Gaza as a living laboratory.
The destruction is so great that usual means of administering aid and overseeing reconstruction are inadequate, the World Bank official said.
American government agencies face legal restrictions on working directly with the Palestinian Authority. Other institutions are reluctant to do business with the Palestinian Authority because of its reputation for corruption. All of this makes private companies crucial elements of the plan, even as they too struggle with the risks of investing in a highly uncertain environment.
While the largest projects require clarity about Gaza’s future political administration, other initiatives, such as those supporting small businesses, could begin as soon as military activity ceases.
“I want to focus on how we open the bread shop and how we get factories running,” said Jim Pickup, executive director of the Middle East Investment Initiative, a nonprofit that funds development projects. “Every truck that clears debris is a small business that feeds a family.”
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2024-04-28 14:22:42
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