Cool idea but total fantasy.

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-pitches-project-sunrise-plan-to-turn-gaza-into-high-tech-metropolis-ebbd96ae?st=FX7kcA&reflink=article_copyURL_share

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A team led by President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, two top White House aides, developed a draft proposal to convert the bombed-out enclave into a gleaming metropolis. In 32 pages of PowerPoint slides, replete with images of coastal high-rises alongside charts and cost tables, the plan outlines steps to take Gaza residents from tents to penthouses and from poverty to prosperity.

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Bottom line:

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"Nothing happens until Hamas disarms. Hamas will not disarm, so nothing will happen,"

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The Peace Plan that has to happen before you can rebuild has already failed since no one wants to participate in the international security force that is part of that plan. Only way this works is if you fully exterminate Hamas and relocate Palestinians to another country.

Good luck with that.

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"If you say something enough people will believe it so if they say they aren't nation-building, they hope people will believe it," said Cook, the CFR senior fellow. "But they are nation-building."

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The project, according to the draft, would cost a total of $112.1 billion over 10 years, though the U.S. would commit to being an "anchor" supporting nearly $60 billion in grants and guarantees on debt for "all the contemplated workstreams" in that time period. Gaza could then self-fund many projects over the following years of the plan, the proposal projects, and eventually pay down its debt as improvements fuel local industry and the broader economy.

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Pass.

Burdizzo said:

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Palestine is to Israel what Pine Ridge is to the United States. No matter how much money and good will gets sent there to help improve things, it all gets destroyed. It is not a giving problem. It is a cultural problem.

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And the Ottomans would agree with you. Its not even a Muslim issue. Its more like Afghanistan -- some regional cultures are write-offs from the mindset. What is incredible is our govt and press think they can be constructive and brings them.

rocky the dog said:

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You would.

LOL!!!!!!

WWII taught us the wrong lessons...that the super baddies can change teams and be the good guys. This is a problem for the Arab world to solve. Let the Gulf States that like USD deal with the Palestinian problem and disarming. Israel needs to stand on its own feet, we've given them enough of our treasure.

Malibu said:

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WWII taught us the wrong lessons...that the super baddies can change teams and be the good guys. This is a problem for the Arab world to solve. Let the Gulf States that like USD deal with the Palestinian problem and disarming. Israel needs to stand on its own feet, we've given them enough of our treasure.

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You have a point, but the Romans had found that could be true to, so the brilliance of the American approach has precedents. It just needs to not be blind like the average MSM emotional or collegiate take is. Some places are write-offs, some cultures can only be kept at beyond arm's length. The Caliphs would tell you this too.

On the other hand, with proper recognition of the fact that nations generally, with the signal exception of 21st C West, serve their own direct interests first --- you can indeed make a former "baddie" or enemy into a "good guy" in the sense of on your side. Its all about respecting the self-interests and rational stance. A particular crazy ruler you can't do that with (see North Korea) but it can work in general. Unfortunately the whole Russia thing is a good example -- since the 90's some of that conflict has been forced by very bad foreign policy and vision.

Loren Visser said:

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Iranians will empower Palestians to destroy anything and everything. As said above, it's a culture problem.

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FIFY

Malibu said:

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The project, according to the draft, would cost a total of $112.1 billion over 10 years, though the U.S. would commit to being an "anchor" supporting nearly $60 billion in grants and guarantees on debt for "all the contemplated workstreams" in that time period. Gaza could then self-fund many projects over the following years of the plan, the proposal projects, and eventually pay down its debt as improvements fuel local industry and the broader economy.

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Pass.

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And that $112B number is a joke. You could count on that number being 3-5X.

Yes, I agree, but Islamic fundamentalism is frankly incompatible with Western interests, and we don't have the language to even persuade except kinetic language. The whole point of that religion is to live in the 7th century and kill people that don't believe like they do. A monorail and oceanfront high rise isn't going to get people to change their mind. It takes a common culture like the Gulf States to do the work of taming ISIS and Palestine, it's a job the West frankly doesn't have the tools to do.

The brochure picture evoked this image for me.

DallasAg 94 said:

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Loren Visser said:

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Iranians will empower Palestians to destroy anything and everything. As said above, it's a culture problem.

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FIFY

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Nah, that's a recent phenomena -- roughly dating to Carter. The whole divide from Iran is partly a foreign policy miscarriage of collosal scale. Normally Shi'ia Iran wouldn't care at all about mostly Sunni Palestine or its locale. This is `poke in the eye' aimed at America and Israel. Which is to say, the Iranian support for Palestine can be made `too costly' and Trump started to send that message. In fact, this is true for much of the Mideast - -very few powers in that region viscerally care about Palestine -- its about using it as a proxy to sow trouble.

The denizens of that s-hole don't want to be happy/wealthy etc. Their priority is to kill jews.

Whatever, I don't favor the US taxpayer spending a dime to 'redevelop' the place anyway.

This is the most unserious proposal this admin has come up with yet. Legitimately shocking to me this is being prepared as a real thing. I thought it was just another Trump red herring/rambling to piss off reporters when it was first talked about.

How much money does Kushner stand to make from this if it is even attempted?

Malibu said:

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Yes, I agree, but Islamic fundamentalism is frankly incompatible with Western interests, and we don't have the language to even persuade except kinetic language. The whole point of that religion is to live in the 7th century and kill people that don't believe like they do. A monorail and oceanfront high rise isn't going to get people to change their mind. It takes a common culture like the Gulf States to do the work of taming ISIS and Palestine, it's a job the West frankly doesn't have the tools to do.

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Oh can mostly agree, though I think your second sentence somewhat sells short some of the less "7th C minded" Mideast Arabs and Persians -- and I don't mean the old cliche of "a few good ones" --- no, I mean on a large scale. The key with Islamist regression is precisely that -- going fundamentalist back to the 7th C -- and ignoring Islamic jurisprudence and decisions and interpretation since. It is as if Judiaism insisted on going back to Canaan war days. "Islamists" are ones that go back to the beginning --which in their case reads more like the days of the Viking looting, raiding, rapine. War. See? But if you go back to the earliest days of Christianity -- you are not on the `power side' -- you are being persecuted, even put in arenas. So going `full fundy' "back to the 1st C" for a Christian leads away from violence.

Yet do agree it is not compatible with Western thought. Multiculturalism and especially importing it is, an disastrous failure and brainchild of arid academics, journos and politicos with no touch in reality. You can make a case certain brands of Asian thought can't exist in the same place as the Western -- -there is nothing strange about this and dismantling the University driven demonization of the concept of discriminating between cultures and mindsets and recognizing they can be incompatible, is a top need for the next generation.

Well, we have modern Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Dubai, both of whom have done a lot recently to clamp down on their internal fundamentalists because it's bad for business. Islam isn't necessarily incompatible with the West, the version of Islam celebrated by Hamas et al is. The actual conversion to civilized Islam has to come from other Gulf States, it's not a problem we can solve.

Malibu said:

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Well, we have modern Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Dubai, both of whom have done a lot recently to clamp down on their internal fundamentalists because it's bad for business. Islam isn't necessarily incompatible with the West, the version of Islam celebrated by Hamas et al is. The actual conversion to civilized Islam has to come from other Gulf States, it's not a problem we can solve.

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Agree fully on that. In fact, with our recent energy independence potential, its becoming far less clear to me why we insist on meddling in that region so much. The Syria abortion driven by McCain and Obama admin is a good example. So what if it was a Russian proxy as Egypt was ours? It didn't rate creating and enabling something like ISIS. As despots go, Assad was somewhat tolerable. Our meddling there and Libya was totally out of line. That part the dissident right has absolutely correct about foreign adventurism.

We pay for the destruction and the rebuild.

Right now the Palestinians in Gaza can have it all - western democracies and rich Arab nations are ready to pour hundreds of billions into rebuilding Gaza. They could likely negotiate with Israel to expand Gaza.

But it won't happen. Too many are prepared to fight and die simply to kill as many Israelis as possible and take over the land of Israel. "From the River to the Sea" means exterminating Israel and its people and taking over the entirety of the land. Period.

Every other country in the region has booted the Palestinians from their country: Jordan (who also killed about half of them), Lebanon, Egypt. Even Syria. The explanation is Biblical.

So the fight will continue to the end of the world - and that is Biblical as well.

Wait so Israel uses our tax dollars to level the place and now they're gonna use our tax dollars to rebuild it??

Don't rebuild Gaza. Let Israel annex the whole strip, and expel the entire population, like the Czechs did to the Sudeten Germans. Solve the Gaza problem once and for all.

Sounds like the tenement housing projects of The Great Society.

Rebuild? Too much of Gaza has not yet been destroyed.

rocky the dog said:

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Wish I hadn't laughed as hard as I did at this.

Malibu said:

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The brochure picture evoked this image for me.

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Monorail!

Not a single U.S. taxpayer cent should be spent on Gaza.

Colonel Kurtz said:

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Wait so Israel uses our tax dollars to level the place and now they're gonna use our tax dollars to rebuild it??

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And the best part, we'll probably get the gift of taking in hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Win-win-win for Israel, lose-lose-lose for America. MIGA!

zephyr88 said:

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Not a single U.S. taxpayer cent should be spent on Gaza.

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The Saudi's next door, fellow Mohammedans, are throwing literally trillions of dollars at this 'The Line' city, a vanity project for their sheik.

Maybe they (and/or other oil-rich arab states) should be the types funding any 'rebuild' of the human cesspool that is Gaza.