By Marcelina Horrillo Husillos, Journalist and Correspondent at The European Business Review
U.S. President Donald Trump shared his vision of a Gaza Strip to clear its nearly 2 million Palestinian inhabitants by relocating them to new homes else were, so that the US could send troops to the Strip, take ownership, develop it into an international beach resort under U.S. control and build the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
To see an American president endorse what would be the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from their home – many made makeshift shelters in the ruins of their homes destroyed in Israeli’s onslaught against Hamas -, is an open amoral encouragement of an exodus that would subvert decades of US policy, international law and basic humanity showed the most imperialist reflex, after he’s already threatened to annex the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada. He envisaged a real estate deal whereby he’d assume responsibility for Gaza and mastermind a job-creating urban regeneration project, included renewable energy, a light rail system, airports and harbors, digital governance and beachfront hotels. He called it an American “ownership position.” A better phrase would be colonialism for the 21st century.
In Trump’s recent public pronouncements on Gaza, there’s a crucial missing element — any sense that the Palestinian people would have a choice in their own destiny. As Aaron David Miller, a former US Middle East peace negotiator, said on CNN: “It’s not a real estate deal for them, it’s not even a humanitarian issue for them. It’s an existential issue.”
Gaza Riviera’s Plan Coined
Media reports suggest Trump’s idea was based on a 49-page document drawn up by Washington-based economics professor Joseph Pelzman last summer, and it revived an idea floated by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner a year ago.
During a Podcast talk last August, Pelzman said that in order to make his plan happen, Gaza needs to be “completely emptied out,” ; the US “can lean on Egypt” to accept refugees from Gaza because the country is in debt to the US, he suggested.
The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative.
Kushner was Trump’s senior White House adviser in his first term and played a key role in the Abraham Accords between Tel Aviv and four Arab countries in 2020. His Saudi-backed firm Affinity Partners “received the green-light from Israeli regulators to double its stake in Phoenix Financial Ltd”, which is a major Israeli financial firm and funds the construction of illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The nod from Israeli regulators came days before Trump’s inauguration.
He stated that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable… if people would focus on building up livelihoods… It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there but, from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
Trump’s February 5 statements on taking over and owning Gaza and resettling Gaza’s Palestinian population elsewhere, in “a beautiful area with homes and safety they can live out their lives in peace and harmony” because “the only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. It’s right now a demolition site… Virtually every building is down.” Reaffirm previous talks around the subject to make 2 million Palestinians leave their homes and never return, something that could be classified as ethnic cleansing.
Old Rooted 21st White Colonialism
White colonial dreams of rights to other peoples’ lands can be traced as far back as the 1479 Treaty of Alcacovas, which established the principle that an area outside of Europe could be claimed by a European country, and was followed within 50 years by the Treaty of Tordesillas and the Treaty of Saragossa with which the Portuguese and the Spanish purported to divide the globe between themselves. There is a clear line from that to the infamous Berlin West Africa Conference 400 years later, attended by the US and all major European powers which established the legal claim by Europeans that all of Africa could be occupied by whoever could take it.
Similar proposals were enabled free trade laid out by the Berlin Conference 140 years ago gave birth to the horror that was the Congo Free State – a veritable hell that in 23 years claimed the lives of up to 13 million Congolese. The conference also supercharged and militarised what became known as the Scramble for Africa, which was accompanied by brutal wars of conquest, disease and campaigns of extermination. More than a century later, Africans are still living with the impact.
The precedent of using the protection and development of capitalism to justify colonial occupation is today reflected in Trump’s assertion that he will rebuild and internationalise Gaza, creating jobs and prosperity for “everyone”. In essence, Trump is unwittingly attempting to base his colonial claim on to Gaza on the doctrine: that he can impose American rule, in this case through expulsion of the natives, and that he will enable trade to flourish.
Real State over Dead Bodies
Since its inception, Israel has operated as a colonial power, fragmenting, dominating, and erasing the indigenous population. From the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were violently cleansed, to the ongoing annihilation of Gaza, Israel’s actions mirror the extractive, exploitative logic of European colonial regimes. Like the First Nations in Canada or the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, Palestinians are treated as obstacles to progress: “progress” that envisions Gaza as Dubai, another capitalist playground.
Latest figures just before the ceasefire went into effect recorded at least 61,709 people killed, including 17,492 children. The figure for missing or presumed dead is 14,222 while 111,588 people, mostly women and children, have been wounded, a majority with life-altering injuries. Nearly 80 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure, especially in the north, has been completely destroyed.
The International Court of Justice has issued two advisory opinions concerning Israel and Palestine, the 9 July 2004 Advisory Opinion on the Wall, and the 19 July 2024 Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The ICJ has no option but to issue a judgment confirming that Israel has perpetrated genocide, and that the issue of “intent” has been established. It is a continuation of the Nakba, a continuation of the Zionist dream of taking the entire territory for the Israelis and expel the native Palestinians, as if they were not human, as if they did not matter, as if they had no rights.
At present, after 15 months of bombardment, Gaza is a “demolition site” in Trump’s words, that will require 10-15 years of reconstruction. His proposal drawn shocked reactions from Palestinians, Arab neighbouring countries and Western audiences who say it would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing and illegal under international law. However, the Gulf countries see a potential source of investment in rebuilding Gaza, Saudis have consistently said they won’t agree to this unless a clear path toward Palestinian statehood opens up, strongly rejecting offering any finance while a pathway to an independent Palestinian state remains closed.
Conclusion
Your fate is decided not by you, but by some ruler in a foreign capital, simply because they are stronger, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Colonial fantasies thrive on illusion. Past and present, imperial powers imagine emptying lands, redrawing borders, and erasing histories to achieve their ambitions. What Trump is proposing in Gaza and elsewhere is a return to old colonialism, and geopolitics run by the law of the jungle. That, after all, is what colonialism is in its most fundamental form. Your fate is decided not by you, but by some ruler in a foreign capital, simply because they are stronger, and there is nothing you can do about it. Trump’s obliviousness to the aspirations of Palestinians and his assumption that they’d prefer a modern housing development elsewhere showed a stunning naivety about the causes of the conflict. But it was reflected in an interaction in the Oval Office when he asked, “Why would they want to return? The place has been hell.” A reporter replied: “But it’s their home, sir. Why would they leave?”
It’s notable that two of the territories Trump has fixated on, Greenland and Gaza, are in some ways two of the last remaining holdovers of the colonial age. That’s not to say they’re the same: Greenland is an autonomous territory with meaningful self-rule, albeit ultimately under Danish sovereignty, while the status of Gaza is, to say the least, highly contested. (Hamas still largely controls internal governance; Israel maintains external control, while the UN and many human rights groups view it as occupied territory.) But both are home to a recognized people with a long claim to the land. And both are considered in some circles to be examples of the unfinished business of decolonization.
Ultimately, Gaza’s story is not only one of rubble or colonial violence but of enduring defiance. Palestinian resistance, like that of colonized peoples before them, reminds us that the colonial fantasy is doomed to fail. Tragically, this failure always comes at an unbearable human cost for which we must struggle to ensure that the perpetrators are finally held accountable.
