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By Tom O'Connor
Deputy Editor, National Security and Foreign Policy
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As Israel sets out to expand military operations in Gaza, a senior Israeli official told Newsweek that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is sticking behind U.S. President Donald Trump's vision of transforming the war-torn Palestinian territory into a coveted Middle East destination.
Israeli Consul General in New York Ofir Akunis argued that Gaza could one day emerge in the style of the United Arab Emirates, a nation whose coastal desert cities, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi, now attract tourists and capital from across the globe.
"I'm for it," Akunis told Newsweek of Trump's proposal to turn Gaza into a "Riviera of the Middle East," a plan he first outlined in February and has repeatedly touted.
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"As a former minister of regional cooperation, I think that there is huge potential to the Gaza Strip," Akunis said. "And I will tell you my model is the Emirates. What's the problem? There is a very long beach, the sea is wide, very good climate. You can use desalination and sell the water to whoever, and [there could be] agriculture and water tech and food tech."
"They just need to decide they want it," he added.
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A Controversial Proposal
Akunis' comments echo the language often used by Trump, a former real estate mogul, who once again referred to Gaza as "an incredible piece of important real estate" and reiterated the potential for direct U.S. involvement during his latest meeting with Netanyahu last month.
"I think it's something that we would be involved in, but having a peace force like the United States there controlling and owning the Gaza Strip would be a good thing," Trump said at the time. "Because right now, all it is, is for years and years, all I hear about is killing and Hamas and problems."
"And if you take the people, the Palestinians, and move them around to different countries and you have plenty of countries that will do that, and you really have a freedom zone," he added. "You call it the freedom zone, a free zone, a zone where people aren't going to be killed every day. That's a hell of a place. You know what I call it, a great location that nobody wants to live in."
Yet Trump's disruptive vision for Gaza has been met with widespread regional criticism, including from the UAE, not least because of his calls for the resettlement of Palestinians to other countries for an indefinite period of time. The U.S. leader has since clarified that he would not pursue the forceful expulsion of Palestinians but rather would seek that they leave voluntarily, a position reiterated Tuesday by U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott.
'We want peace and the immediate release of all hostages, and we've also been clear from this podium and elsewhere that any departure from Gaza must be voluntary," Pigott told reporters, emphasizing that "Hamas bears sole responsibility for the war and for the resumption of hostilities."
The effort is complicated by the fact that, despite reports of numerous U.S. overtures, the offer has yet to receive any confirmed takers, both in the Arab world and beyond. Also still uncertain is the extent of Trump's commitment for the U.S. to assume direct control over Gaza.
Yet the effort to establish a counterproposal has yet to find success, either. Shortly after Trump announced his plan, UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef al-Otaiba told a forum in February that he saw "no alternative" to Trump's suggestion, though the UAE would be "happy to explore" other postwar paths.
Weeks later, a new framework emerged, drafted by Egypt and later endorsed by the Arab League. The plan called for the formation of an administrative committee of independent Palestinians to temporarily lead Gaza until a reformed Palestinian National Authority (PA) could assume control. International peacekeepers would also be deployed in Gaza and the West Bank, the seat of the PA's power.
But the deal was met with a cold reception by the White House and Israeli Foreign Ministry, both of which argued separately that the solution failed to take into account realities on the ground in Gaza. The Israeli side took the opportunity to reinstate support for Trump's plan, which Netanyahu had referred to as "the first good idea I've heard."
Hamas, which dismissed Trump's plan, welcomed the Arab proposal as it mirrored the group's stated willingness to cede power to an elected Palestinian national unity government, or a new technocratic committee of Palestinian experts.
Hamas' Conditions
Today, Hamas says it would also welcome international efforts to rebuild Gaza, only if it meant Palestinians could remain there.
"Gaza is the homeland of an integral part of the Palestinians, not a place for rent. Throughout history, Gaza has not accepted strangers or allowed them to settle there," Hamas Political Bureau member and spokesperson Basem Naim told Newsweek.
"We welcome any development of the Gaza Strip and its reconstruction with the participation of its people," he said. "We (the Palestinians) are the ones who decide the future of Gaza."
Naim was also skeptical of any attempt on the part of the U.S. to take control over the territory, given the staying power of Hamas and other armed Palestinian factions, some 19 months after their attack that sparked the longest and deadliest confrontation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"How will America succeed in controlling the Gaza Strip when it has supported Israel with every means possible to defeat the resistance and control the Strip, and thus far has failed miserably?" Naim asked. "The shortest path to calm and stability in the region, not just Gaza, is to grant the Palestinians their rights to freedom and independence."
As for the UAE, as with a number of Arab states, Emirati officials have continued to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and condemned Israel's decision to resume attacks after the unraveling of a ceasefire agreement in March.
Last week, the Times of Israel reported that the UAE had rejected an Israeli offer to contribute funds to a new humanitarian aid regime focused on bypassing Hamas, citing a senior official familiar with the matter.
Newsweek reached out to the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.
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Histories Diverge
While the modern UAE, like Gaza, has roots in British colonialism, it won its independence in 1971 largely peacefully, allowing it to rapidly develop uncontested through access to oil resources, a focus on trade and massive investment in business, infrastructure and services. Today, Dubai is among the most visited cities in the world and is often ranked as the region's wealthiest city.
On the other hand, Gaza, among the most impoverished areas of the Middle East, has been on the front lines of history for millennia, and has been caught in the crosshairs of the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict since its inception in 1948. After clashing Jewish and Palestinian national movements escalated into the first Arab-Israeli war upon the collapse of the United Kingdom's colonial holding, Egypt established effective control over the 141-square-mile Mediterranean territory that would become known as the Gaza Strip.
The Egyptian administration lasted until the next major Arab-Israeli war fought in 1967, during which Israel seized control of Gaza. Israeli military rule would last nearly four decades, during which Hamas emerged as a splinter of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in the 1980s, until a 2005 disengagement.
Palestinian elections held the following year resulted in a major win for Hamas, leading to a crisis in the fledgling PA government and a violent rift between the Islamist group and the traditional Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) vanguard of Fatah, a secular, leftist movement. Hamas ultimately emerged victorious, seizing control and establishing a rival government in 2007.
Today, Akunis views the decision to withdraw from Gaza, including the strategic border with Egypt known to the Israelis as the "Philadelphi corridor," as a "huge mistake" that fueled the kind of security issues that led to the current war and several others preceding it.
Gaza's Fate in the Balance
But as reports indicate that the Israeli Cabinet has recently approved a plan to reestablish control over the entirety of Gaza, Akunis argued that Israel did "not want to be there forever." Rather, such a move was being put into action because Hamas "will not free all the hostages and not surrender," he said.
If Palestinians were to retain some form of control in Gaza, he argued that "the PLO must start to do what we ask them for when they signed the Oslo Agreements"—the 1990s series of peace accords that paved the way for the establishment of the PA—"and it's to fight terror and not to encourage terror."
Yet Akunis also asserted that Israel did not have "any plan to resettle" Gaza, even if such positions have been expressed by far-right figures of Netanyahu's ruling coalition, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and members of the Knesset.
"It's not an official policy," Akunis said. "You never heard the prime minister [say this]. Maybe there's a few people in the coalition who said it, okay. Everybody can say whatever they want."
"On the other side, in the opposition, there are a lot of MKs who are still saying that you need to withdraw from Judea and Samaria, that you need to withdraw from the Golan Heights," Akunis added. "Everybody can hold his position and his opinion, it's fine. This is part of the Israeli democracy."
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