Israel’s right-wing finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has declared the Gaza Strip to be a “real estate bonanza” and that he was negotiating with the US over dividing up the land after the war – something that was once decried internationally.
He made the comments during an event in Tel Aviv, declaring “a business plan is on President Trump’s table.”
“We’ve finished the demolition phase. Now we need to build,” he said.
Donald Trump began exploring proposals for the US to acquire “a long-term ownership position” in Gaza in February, describing it as potentially the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
The proposal would entail the forced removal of Palestinians from the region and would violate international law.
The US and Israel have indicated that it would be a “voluntary” emigration. The BBC has contacted the White House and the US State Department to comment on Smotrich’s statement.
Trump’s proposal – rejected wholesale by Palestinians, Arab governments, and the international community at large – subsequently seemed to have been abandoned by the White House, with Trump in July referring to it as “a concept that was really embraced by a lot of people, but also some people didn’t like it”.
But the Washington Post has reported this month that an incarnation of the concept was back in play, and would see Gaza converted into a trusteeship operated by the US for a minimum of ten years as it is developed as a tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing center.
Israel’s Gaza military campaign, which included the use of mass air attacks and the destruction of buildings, has resulted in widespread devastation in the territory.
The United Nations (UN) puts the percentage of housing units damaged or destroyed at 92%, schools needing complete reconstruction or substantial rehabilitation in order to be operational again at 91%, and damaged cropland at 86%.
In February, the UN estimated that reconstruction of the territory would take 10 years and cost $53.2 billion (£46.1bn).
“We spent a lot of money on this war,” Smotrich said. “So we must split how to make a percentage on the marketing of the land later.”
Smotrich, head of Israel’s Religious Zionist party, is an ultranationalist who has been sanctioned by the UK and other nations for repeated calls for violence against Palestinians.
He holds authority over planning in the West Bank and has continually promoted expansionist policies.
In August, he made public a plan for the annexation of about four-fifths of the land.
He stated the proposal would entail “applying Israeli sovereignty” to about 82% of the West Bank and that this was according to the principle of “maximum land with minimum Arabs”.
Israel constructed some 160 settlements that are home to 700,000 Jews since it took over the West Bank and East Jerusalem – territories Palestinians aspire to own, together with Gaza, for a desired future state – when it fought the 1967 Middle East war. Some 3.3 million Palestinians live among them.
The settlements are prohibited by international law.
Israel initiated its Gaza war as an act of retaliation against the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which approximately 1,200 people were slain and 251 others were taken hostage.
A minimum of 65,062 have been killed in Israeli strikes since then, nearly half of them children and women, Gaza’s health ministry reported.
This week, a UN inquiry commission found that Israel had perpetrated genocide against Palestinians in Gaza – a claim the Israeli government refuted emphatically.
