Plans Call for “New Rafah” Built in Israel’s Image — Without Palestinians

A Palestinian woman carries her child as she mourns near makeshift tents after the Israeli shelling of a refugee tent encampment in the al-Mawasi area west of Rafah, Gaza Strip, killed at least 21 Palestinians, including children, on May 28, 2024. Photo: Jehad Alshrafi/Anadolu via Getty Images

Over the past several days, the “Board of Peace,” the long-awaited Trump-led body that promised to turn the Gaza Strip into what amounts to an international viceroyalty, was finally announced. Among its founding members were politicians like Tony Blair and Marco Rubio, and financiers like Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan and World Bank President Ajay Banga. A multitude of countries — such as the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Vietnam, and Canada — have agreed to participate in the board’s operations. Talk in the press and in the diplomatic world about the Board of Peace have taken on momentous overtones, obscuring the fact that its creation has not been a blissful negotiation but a sudden lurch over a cliff.

Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, announced the ceasefire deal would be moving into phase two last week, despite numerous provisions of the first phase — including allowing in full humanitarian aid and an end to Israeli attacks — left unmet. Some of the membership of the Board of Peace that is to rule the Strip from without has been announced, as well as the technocratic, “apolitical” board that is supposed to rule the Strip from within. This, despite no movement on increasing the flow of humanitarian aid, temporary homes for the displaced, or almost anything that Israel would owe the Palestinians. A deadline for Hamas to disarm within two months was reported in December; a Hamas political official would later tell Al Jazeera that this had not been communicated to them.

Following a meeting last month with Netanyahu, Trump apparently gave the all-clear to begin reconstruction in Rafah, regardless of the negotiations progress. The U.S. and Israel will now move to reconstruction without the Israel Defense Forces withdrawing or the International Stabilization Force being formed, building on the directives announced by Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, back in late October.

Reconstruction would only be allowed in parts of Gaza behind the Yellow Line, which is under IDF control, while barring reconstruction in parts of Gaza still under the control of Hamas. For months, virtually no reconstruction materials have entered the Gaza Strip, and Gazan territory behind the Yellow Line continues to be demolished under the guise of dismantling “Hamas infrastructure.” Witkoff, who was previously a New York real estate developer, and Kushner, a real estate investor, were not taking the helm of these matters because of their supposed political expertise.

From almost the beginning of the war, a return to Gaza had been advertised to Israelis as a potential real estate bonanza. Trump, a real estate mogul in his own right, conjured up images of a potential “Gaza Riviera,” promising that a massive redevelopment of Gaza would “make it exciting.” 

The details of “Project Sunrise,” which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, have not been publicly revealed by any American official. Documents seen by the Journal articulate a complete uprooting of Gaza over 10 years, reconstructing every major city in the Strip from the ground up. Among its flashier selling points are the creation of a “digitally-driven smart city” with AI-optimized grids, high-speed rail, and, of course, luxury beachside resorts. It also proposes realigning the seat of administrative power away from Gaza City, which the IDF sought to destroy entirely in the closing days of the war, to Rafah, which has been almost entirely destroyed, and is currently the seat of power of the IDF-operated proxy militia known as the Popular Forces.

The project envisions “New Rafah” as a city not of 171,000, as it was pre-war, but of more than 500,000, with computer-generated imagery showing idyllic residential streets and extensive green space. There were over 80 schools and a university in Rafah before the war; under the proposal there would eventually be more than 200 schools and universities. There were three hospitals and 15 clinics; now there would be more than 75. In the course of the war, 81 mosques were completely destroyed; 180 new mosques (and cultural centers) would take their place.

Importantly, the slides obtained by the Journal contain the rather large caveat that the plan is “contingent on comprehensive compliance by Hamas to demilitarize and decommission all weapons and tunnels.” According to Defense Minister Israel Katz, demolishing “underground terrorist infrastructure” necessitates the destruction of “all the buildings above them” as well.

What has been left out of many of these public discussions about reconstruction is the reality on the ground, and how it was created: Rafah, despite the assumption hanging in the air that it had been a victim of the basic nature of war and crossfire, was deliberately razed last year as a form of collective punishment. The city on the Egyptian border was suddenly placed within an IDF buffer zone in May and then rapidly depopulated of the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians already forced into the area by Israel’s previous advances. Now, the United States is advertising its magnanimity in rebuilding the city, along with every other city in Gaza, that its closest ally intentionally demolished to prepare the path for massive Western investment in the project of further displacing the Palestinians.

These rendered images of beautiful cities and serene vistas — where the sun is literally rising — purposefully obscure the actual existence of life, if it can even be considered as such, under IDF control. Despite promises of cities of hundreds of thousands, virtually no Palestinians currently live in the areas behind the Yellow Line, having been ethnically cleansed of their native populations and turned into kill zones in which Israeli settlers can enter and be politely escorted back, but Gazans are killed for crossing. The only Palestinians allowed to live in these areas are militiamen and affiliated personnel directly working under the purview of the IDF, ranks that Israel is undoubtedly looking to bolster with promises of rewards, such as housing it won’t destroy, food it won’t block, and salaries it won’t seize.

Despite internet videos bragging of abundance and access to critical services, videos emerging from Rafah under the control of the Popular Forces militia show widely demolished blocks, schools being run out of bombed-out ruins, and a single extant villa being used as a base for the organization. Videos have also emerged of the group’s fighters torturing people accused of being members of Hamas, and Palestinian police have reported instances of rape and assault against the families of those who have agreed to collaborate.

In spite of attempts in the American media to portray the Popular Forces’ previous leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, as a liberal trailblazer articulating a stable future, the convicted drug runner with connections to ISIS was killed last month in a clan dispute, reportedly beaten to death in an argument about the group’s collaboration with Israel, according to the Israeli news site Ynet. Exact figures on the group’s popularity with Palestinians outside its zone of control is difficult to ascertain without polling, but news of Abu Shabab’s death was met with scenes of celebrations inside the Gazan city of Khan Younis and in refugee camps in Lebanon.

Promises made in the “Project Sunrise” plan for massive economic opportunities and integration into the global economy also serve directly as means of permanent dispossession. Gaza’s former airport, Yasser Arafat International, was demolished early on in the Rafah offensive, and a vaguely detailed airport is set to be built on land that was formerly the city’s residential south. Gaza’s seafront is set to be redeveloped into a “glitzy riviera” worth $55 billion, cutting into parts of refugee camps like al-Shati and Nuseirat. Massive swathes of Gaza’s east are set to be demolished entirely, with towns like Khuza’a, refugee camps like Bureij, and neighborhoods like Shuja’iyya turned into industrial areas for economic development. Beit Hanoun, a city in the north once home to 50,000, appears to be in an area now demarcated for an AI data center. While it is difficult to parse exact areas within the city redevelopment plans, the core of Jabalia, which was a hotbed of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s invasion, appears to be slated to become a rectangular park in the center of the city.

Sources told the Wall Street Journal that the implementation of “Sunrise” could begin within two months. Whether that plan could actually come to pass in any meaningful form remains an open question, with questions about its infeasibility left unaddressed.

Despite Netanyahu’s publicly insisting — in English — that he intends to follow the ceasefire plan, is eager to move into phase two, and eventually wants to withdraw from Gaza, Israeli officials in his government have said just the opposite. Katz told West Bank settlers in late December, “We are deep inside Gaza and we will never leave Gaza.” Katz added, “in northern Gaza, we will establish Nahal pioneer groups in place of the settlements that were evacuated,” referring to the Israeli paramilitary unit that established agricultural outposts inside the Strip in the 1970s that later became settlements. When news broke in the Arabic and English-language press, Katz officially walked back his statements but doubled down a day later. “There will be a significant security zone even after we move to the next stage,” Katz remarked at an education conference. “In the northern part [of Gaza] it will be possible to establish Nahal nuclei in an orderly manner.”

Katz was once at the helm of Israel’s plans to redevelop Rafah, announcing last July, two months after the city began to be razed, that 600,000 Palestinians should be moved into a “humanitarian city” to be built on the ruins. After being cleared by Israeli security services, Palestinians will not be allowed to leave the zone, and their only authorized movement would be to “voluntarily emigrate” from the Strip to other countries.

Palestinian children queue for water to help their family as Palestinians have to wait for hours in the water queues in front of the water dispensers in the city to meet their daily water needs in Rafah, Gaza, in May 2014.  Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images

Netanyahu is apparently also pushing his own distinct plan. In his meeting with Trump, the Israeli prime minister reportedly pushed for a move where Israel would take control of 75 percent of Gaza, up from the 53 percent it controlled at the start of the ceasefire. While no such shift in plans took place, at least in public, moves have already been made to create this reality on the ground.

The Israeli military has continued moving Yellow Line demarcation blocks around Gaza further and further inward, seizing what is estimated to be 10 percent more of Gaza’s territory and expelling the population living there, at least once with the assistance of another IDF proxy militia based elsewhere in the Strip. Instead of expanding access to humanitarian aid under the provisions of the ceasefire, Israel has banned a host of aid groups from operating in the Strip, ordering them to cease operations by March 1.

Analysts at Forensic Architecture identified 13 new military outposts built by the IDF in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect, and Katz told Israeli troops on January 2 that they should prepare for a return to fighting in Gaza should Hamas continue to refuse to disarm. Talk is already brewing that Israel may foresee a return to the war in March if Hamas does not forfeit every single rifle in its possession.

The stage is being set for Project Sunrise, should it be officially announced, to act as a carrot, with Israel’s military as the ever-present stick. Israeli media is reporting that 70 percent of the required rubble removal in Rafah has been completed, and that “massive earthworks” by the IDF mean to create a community to hold up to 20,000 Palestinians, what is variously being called “Green Rafah” or “New Rafah.” While the Wall Street Journal makes note of plans to provide temporary shelter for Palestinians while the territory is being rebuilt, Israel’s Channel 14 reported that because the Strip will not be fit for human habitation in the near term, the project envisions they may have to be moved to a third country while the Strip is being rebuilt, potentially Somaliland. Somaliland has officially, yet cagily, denied agreeing to such expulsion in exchange for their historic recognition by Israel at the end of last year.

Already, American plans for the Board of Peace are coming apart. What was originally planned as what amounts to a viceroyalty over Gaza has quickly expanded in Trump’s mind to one day encompass American plans in Ukraine or perhaps even in Greenland. The Trump administration is reportedly asking nations to contribute $1 billion for a permanent seat on the board, and Trump has floated inviting Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin to enter the ring to rule over Gaza — and anything else America may see before it — alongside Israeli billionaires and Tony Blair. Officials in Tel Aviv are already positioning against the announcement and implementation of the board. The IDF has blocked the entry of the technocratic committee into the Strip through the still-closed Rafah crossing. In a fiery speech before the Knesset, Netanyahu bellowed that they will never allow Turkish influence to gain a foothold in Gaza, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has advocated ending the current Gaza military coordination regime with the United States and moving toward full resettlement of the Strip.

As Trump concerns himself primarily with the money-making racket he has constructed for himself, Gaza runs the risk of falling onto the back burner yet again, and Netanyahu stands on the precipice of an arrangement undeniably beneficial to his agenda: an expanded collaborationist network, more Palestinian territory depopulated, and a path to reestablishing settlements in Gaza, all brokered by potentially tens of billions in foreign investment, and all under the banner of humanitarian decency and peace on Earth.