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Analysis
‘Waterfront
property’: what are Trump’s real estate interests in Palestine?
Oliver
Holmes
Many of
US president’s allies support settler projects, and plans to effectively
colonise Gaza are an expansion on ideas from first term
Wed 5 Feb
2025 18.27 GMT
Planning
to “clean out” Palestinians as a real estate money-making scheme is an idea
that has long united the Israeli settler movement and some of Donald Trump’s
circle of US property developers.
For
decades, state-backed settlers have used concrete, steel and brick to build on
occupied land in Palestine in a successful effort to use town-building as a
means to claim territory and permanently force Palestinians from their
homeland.
This
method appealed to sections of Trump’s first administration, and not just
because it was filled with apocalyptic evangelical Christians, who see a Jewish
presence in the Holy Land as a biblical precondition for Armageddon, which they
believe will bring the return of Jesus Christ.
It also
spoke to the real estate mindset of Trump’s family and associates, most
prominently his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the architect of a 2020 “peace” plan
for the Middle East that was never implemented but was heavily focused on
investments.
Now,
Trump has expanded on the idea to its most extreme position, calling for the US
to effectively colonise Gaza in what would amount to an ethnic cleansing of the
population of about 2 million people. The plan is then to “develop” on the
levelled ground, which is still filled with the bodies of tens of thousands
people killed by Israel.
“The US
will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too,” he said.
“We’ll own it.” It followed remarks last month on Gaza where he told reporters:
“You’re talking about a million and a half people … we just clean out that
whole thing.”
Israel
has long used its occupation to make money. The modern state was built on
decades of access to cheap Palestinian labour, as workers had few lucrative
options in their own stifled and isolated economy.
West Bank
settlements include farms and factories (often run by Israelis but staffed by
Palestinians) and many settlements position themselves as cheap commuter
satellite towns for Israelis working in Tel Aviv.
At the
same time, Israel’s tourism industry has boomed under a monopoly on access to
the holy city of Jerusalem, while tour buses use the main Israel-built highway
to the Dead Sea that runs right through occupied land.
Many of
Trump’s allies support these settler projects, either politically or
financially. The former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an evangelical
Christian who has denied that Palestinians even exist as a people, travelled to
Israel during Trump’s first term to physically lay a brick in a settlement in
the West Bank. At the time, he said he might “want to purchase a holiday home”
there.
And
towards the end of Trump’s first term, Mike Pompeo became the first US
secretary of state to officially visit a settlement, a deeply provocative move
that previous US administrations went to lengths to avoid. He took a trip to a
vineyard in the occupied West Bank run by settlers, who blended a red wine that
they named in his honour.
Trump’s
second time in high office is shaping up to be even more property-focused than
his first. His Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, is an American billionaire
real estate investor and developer, and Huckabee is expected to be the next US
ambassador to Israel.
This time
around, the ruins of Gaza are in sharp focus. Last year, Kushner, a former
property dealer married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, praised the “very
valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should
remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip.
Kushner
has become increasingly entwined in the Middle East, with his private equity
firm, Affinity Partners, sourcing funding from rich Gulf states including Saudi
Arabia, which has been looked at as a bankroller for the reconstruction of
Gaza.
Israel
has promoted several economic plans for the coastal territory over the years,
while at the same time besieging Gaza and demanding ultimate overarching
control. An old proposal to build an artificial island off the coast of Gaza to
house a seaport and airport was re-pitched last year by Israel’s former foreign
minister to frustrated EU diplomats looking for a political solution.
Trump’s
takeover plan has echoes of this proposal. The US president said Gaza could
become “the Riviera of the Middle East”, and Witkoff has backed the idea of
transferring Palestinians out of Gaza, saying: “A better life isn’t necessary
tied to physical space that you’re in.”
Meanwhile,
settler groups who were moved out of Gaza under a 2005 “disengagement plan”
want to go back. In December, Harey Zahav, a settler-focused real estate
agency, released an image showing sketches of new buildings among the destroyed
remains of Gaza. “A house on the beach is not a dream!” it said.
How
settlers’ ambitions – or indeed those of the Israeli government – could fit
with Trump’s takeover plan is yet to be seen, although they have a history of
working together.
Nearly 60
years after Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East
Jerusalem, it is fighting allegations of apartheid in the West Bank and
genocide in Gaza, where it has killed nearly 50,000 people.
But none
of that was mentioned when Trump announced his vision for Gaza. Instead, the
Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, stood quietly and smiled before praising
Trump’s idea as something that “could change history”.
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