What happens to the Middle East if Russia and the US stop being enemies?

The US might ignore Russia reasserting itself in Libya and Syria, but Trump and Putin will still compete over Gulf cash

By Sean Mathews

Published date: 7 March 2025

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/what-happens-middle-east-if-russia-and-us-stop-being-enemies

Some call it the end of the post-war order. Others, a grand realignment. Regardless of how it's defined, the Middle East faces a new paradigm: what happens when the US stops viewing Russia as a foe and instead as a potential partner, or at the very least, a neutral actor?

American diplomats and analysts are still struggling to come to grips with this potentially historic shift.

When asked about a report that Israel was lobbying the Trump administration to let Russia keep its military bases in Syria, one career US diplomat in the region replied, “Well, that would be against our national interests?”

They responded with silence when asked what would happen if the US president didn’t see it that way.

Trump has said he wants to partner with Russia for “incredible opportunities”.

On Friday, Trump doubled down, saying he found it easier to deal with Russia than Ukraine, a country the US had been supplying arms and intelligence to until recently. Asked about Russia’s widespread attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid, Trump said Putin was "doing what anybody else would do”.

Trump, Nixon and the China analogy 

The US view of Russia as a foe working against its interests has defined the Middle East since the end of WWII, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt courted Saudi Arabia for Gulf oil. In the following decades, the US worked to counter the Soviet Union across the region.

The US’s support for Israel in the 1973 War led to an eventual peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. In the process, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat evicted Soviet military advisors who had been welcomed by Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Until December 2024, the United States viewed the toppled Syrian Assad dynasty as a vehicle for nefarious Russian power projection.

Trump’s allies looking to explain his outreach to Putin have said he is trying to break up a bloc of states, mainly Russia, Iran and China, from coordinating against the US. They add that Trump’s overtures echo the strategic diplomacy of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger opening up to China in the 1970s.

Chas Freeman, a former US diplomat, whose career spanned almost three decades, told Middle East Eye it was a “false comparison”.

“A better analogy to Trump’s opening to Putin is Sadat going to Jerusalem.”

Freeman is reliable on the subject considering he was the interpreter for Nixon’s trip.

In the Middle East, Trump’s bid to work with Putin may reflect his priorities and a geopolitical world view. Some of Trump’s confidants have raised the alarm about Turkey’s expanding influence.

Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn's world view

Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor whose podcast War Room has become required listening to those seeking to discern Trump’s world view, said recently that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was “one of the most dangerous leaders” in the world and wants to "re-establish the Ottoman Empire”.

Trump himself said that the collapse of the Assad government in Syria was merely an “unfriendly takeover” by Turkey. Trump wants to withdraw US troops from northeastern Syria. According to Reuters, Israel has told the Trump administration one way to reduce Turkey’s influence in the country would be via Russia.

“Donald Trump wants to be out of Syria. I can imagine that Russia and Israel cooperate to limit Turkish influence there and Trump just says, ‘I don’t care. You guys deal with Turkey',” Robert Ford, the US’s former ambassador to Syria, told MEE.

Trump has selected traditional Republicans who have been hostile to Russia, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security advisor Mike Waltz. But career US diplomats and defence officials say their influence is limited.

For example, Rubio sat silent as Vice President JD Vance challenged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House last month. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s unconfirmed Middle East envoy, was the one tapped to meet Putin - speaking for roughly three hours -in Russia.

The gatekeepers to Trump’s selection of appointees are not diehard Russia hawks but those who believe the US should engage Moscow.

Officials looking to get into the White House have courted Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor who was ousted from his first administration over his discussions with the Russians. Trump said he offered Flynn "about ten jobs" in his new administration.

Can Russia broker a US-Iran deal?

Trump hasn’t revived ties with Russia for the Middle East - he wants a ceasefire in Ukraine - but there are areas in the region where Russia is trying to entice the White House.

On Wednesday, the Kremlin said that future talks between Russia and the US would include discussions on Iran's nuclear programme. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to acknowledge a report that Russia offered to mediate between the Islamic Republic and the Trump administration.

Trump says he wants a diplomatic deal with Iran over its nuclear programme. On Friday, he said he sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, asking for talks.

The Obama administration, which tried its own so-called reset with Russia, leaned on the Kremlin during the 2015 nuclear talks.

“Obama gave Russia a lot of concessions for its mediation in the 2015 nuclear deal,” Anna Borshchevskaya, a Russia expert at the Washington Institute For Near East Policy, told MEE.

“In practice, Russia acted as Iran’s lawyer, watering down US concerns about Iranian nuclear proliferation.”

In fact, Russia played a key role for the US after the deal was signed, with Iran shipping excess uranium to Russia to ensure it couldn’t be used as a bomb.

In return, Russia, which shares the Caspian Sea with Iran, reaped economic benefits, sealing a deal to construct a nuclear power plant.

Ford, however, cautioned that Russia’s utility to the US on nuclear talks might be limited. The Obama administration itself bypassed Russia and its European powers to negotiate directly with Iran during the talks.

“Kerry was meeting Zarif directly and then back-briefing the Europeans. I can’t imagine the US or Iranians would rely on the Russians. This is such a life and death matter for Tehran,” Ford said, referring to former Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif, who negotiated the 2015 deal.

Freeman said he is skeptical a grand Russian-US rapprochement will materialise. 

"Things are rearranging themselves in very unpredictable ways. It's like a kaleidoscope. You bang two sides together, and no one knows what new pattern will be formed,” but he said that in the Middle East, what's likely is not “active cooperation, but American silence”.

Chasing Gulf money

If the war in Ukraine ends and Trump lifts sanctions on Russia, he could dent some of the Gulf states' economic activity.

The United Arab Emirates and Russia were deepening ties before the Biden administration slapped sanctions on Russia. But after that, the UAE became a hub for re-exporting sanctioned goods.

Russia could stop paying Emirati middlemen and buy directly from the United States if Trump ends the sanctions.

Borshchevskaya said that Russia could also look to make up lost ground in its weapons sales to the Gulf states if Trump lifts sanctions.

Even during the war, the Arab Gulf talked to Russia about arms sales. Russian arms manufacturers displayed their goods alongside the US at the UAE’s arms expos in recent years.

US officials who spoke with MEE said they believe the US’s advantage over Russia in the oil-rich Gulf makes it a tough competition. Countries like Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia are deeply wired into US air defence systems, such as the Patriots and THAADS.

Meanwhile, the UAE is deepening its cooperation with the US in high-tech sectors like AI, where Russia struggles to compete.

Even as Trump riles Europe, he is courting the Gulf region. On Friday he announced that Saudi Arabia would be his first trip abroad as president after Riyadh agreed to invest $1 trillion in American companies over a four-year period.

“They’ve agreed to do that, so I’m going to be going there… probably over the next month and a half.”

Saying Goodbye to Benjamin Netanyahu Is Long Overdue

Give Miriam Adelson her $100 million back and tell her to go home

Philip Giraldi • March 6, 2025

https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/saying-goodbye-to-benjamin-netanyahu-is-long-overdue/

President Donald Trump’s address to Congress and the nation on Tuesday night was remarkably devoid of any mention of why the United States continues to both enable and be complicit in the Ukrainian conflict with Russia as well as with the war crimes that are being committed by the state of Israel against nearly all its neighbors on a daily basis. The most recent abomination committed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of thugs is the cutting off of food, medicine and temporary housing to the Gazans who were bold enough to return to their ruined homes due to a ceasefire negotiated successfully by US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff in January. Now that Netanyahu has decided to come up with some false assertions to break the agreement, allowing him to continue his extermination of the Palestinian people, Trump as peace maker seems to have disappeared without a trace even though the US was in a sense a guarantor of the phased disengagement. Instead, Trump has doubled down on the side of Israel, issuing a “last warning” to Hamas during direct negotiations with the group to release all of the hostages in Gaza immediately. Per Trump in a posting on Truth Social on Wednesday: “Release all of the hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you.” Trump wrote that he would send Israel “everything it needs to finish the job,” and warned that “Not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say.” It should also be noted that Israel holds thousands of Palestinian prisoners whose fate is evidently of no concern to Donald Trump while the Israeli “world’s most moral army” has continued to kill numerous Palestinians even while the ceasefire was allegedly in place without a squeak coming out of Washington just as it has also been killing Lebanese and Syrians.

I still recall with some fondness the Monty Python movie entitled “The Meaning of Life,” in part because the United States has, since 9/11, been on a berserker course to teach the rest of the world about the “meaning of death.” Some observers maintain that the imperative to deliver millions of dead has been necessary to maintain US dominance in an unstable world, which is a “good thing” for everyone who survives the carnage as they will live by the “rule of international law” as laid down by Washington. But I have something like a different theory, i.e. that much of that kind of thinking derives from the neoconservatives, largely a Jewish-led and funded movement which has come to dominate the foreign policy and national security thinking of both major American political parties. Going back to the first Gulf War, the neocons have believed that US dominance has been good for Israel, particularly as they subsequently perceived that 9/11 was a gift from Jehovah that enabled the full might of the United States military to be used against Israel’s enemies starting with Iraq. Indeed, the Baathist regime was attacked and destroyed based on a series of lies and false intelligence concocted by monsters like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith at the Pentagon plus Scooter Libby in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Israeli intelligence officers from the Embassy in Washington had full and free access to the Wolfowitz Pentagon office while the process was playing out. President George W. Bush was clearly too stupid to realize that he was being conned.

 But getting back to President Trump’s evident reluctance to discuss the one remaining war that he could stop in a heartbeat by cutting off all aid and political support, there is the question that is unanswered about why the US should become an accomplice to mass murder in a slaughter where there is no conceivable American national interest. Indeed, one might reasonably argue that the involvement with Israel and its human rights disaster has already done considerable damage to both the reputation and the economy of the United States. Some observers oddly continue to believe that it is the United States that exploits Israel to further its own imperial ambitions but nothing could be further from the truth as even a cursory examination of the one sidedness of the relationship reveals that it is Israel often acting through its US domestic lobby that is actually running the show.

So if the negatives about Israel are even partly true why is the leadership of the US from both principal parties reluctant to cut the tie that binds Washington to the criminal apartheid enterprise that has illegally occupied and now hides in a place once called Palestine? I personally have long believed that the history of Jewish perfidy directed at corrupting and gaining influence over the United States goes back more than a hundred years with the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913 and the gaining control of many major newspapers at around the same time. As Nathan Mayer Rothschild put it in 1815, “Give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.” And then there are the descendants of Adolph Ochs, who have exercised majority control over the New York Times since Ochs bought the paper in 1896. The Times self-describes as America’s “newspaper of record” with its lies and distortions, particularly when it is Israel that is under discussion.

Not surprisingly, much of the corruption of American institutions by Israel has to do with Jewish money which has influenced the shift of foreign policy views of both major US political parties. In the recent election, Jewish casino billionaire Mirian Adelson reportedly gave Trump $100 million and in exchange he promised to permit Israeli annexation of the Palestinian West Bank, which is currently proceeding. Beyond that buying of favors and the accompanying semi-overt takeover of the United States, there should be serious suspicions about possible hidden “covert actions” undertaken by Israel and its agents. One might cite the assassination of John F. Kennedy just as he was about to force the Israel lobby groups to register while also shutting down Israel’s secret and illegal nuclear weapons program. And then there is 9/11 itself’s possible ties to Israel’s massive spying program in the US at that time to include the “dancing Shlomos” on the day of the attack, and the systematic corruption of congress and the American political system through the “buying of politicians” by Jewish billionaire oligarchs acting on behalf of Israel.

I was pleased last Tuesday when my favorite foreign policy analyst Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, my alma mater, responded to a question from Judge Andrew Napolitano, who had asked why Israel is able to get away with so much that does damage to the United States, to include manipulation of a run of presidents including both Joe Biden and now Donald Trump who dare not challenge a vicious creature like Benjamin Netanyahu. Even Barack Obama, who disliked Netanyahu intensely, knew he had to play the game to placate the Democratic Party’s Jewish donors.

Mearsheimer explained that there are potentially and actually very severe consequences for any politician who steps out of line as the Israeli Lobby in the United States wields immense largely extralegal power. Bingo, Professor Mearsheimer! It is what many of us have long believed and are even beginning to speak about and it is perhaps time for the country as a whole to begin to take notice before the government moves definitively to ban all criticism of the Jewish state. For starters, the Attorney General might just begin to enforce the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) legislation that President Kennedy was trying to enforce vis-à-vis one of the first Israel lobbying groups in the US, the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs, which is today renamed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Unfortunately, the current Attorney General Pam Bondi has gone the other way, making it harder for prosecutors to initiate action based on FARA, a deliberate move to protect the Israel Lobby.

The JFK attempted US crackdown headed by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who also was subsequently assassinated, coincided with development of investigative evidence demonstrating that Israel had stolen both enriched uranium and nuclear triggers to develop its own secret nuke arsenal. That development, plus the significant evidence that Israel has committed a host of humanitarian crimes, has since made it illegal for the US provide aid to the offending country under the Leahy Law and associated legislation, but Israel has never been held accountable for anything due to the strength of its Lobby and the accommodating media. Israel’s immunity from US laws and regulations is referred to by cognoscenti as the “Israeli Exemption.”

Congress and the White House run in fear of the wrath of Zion, so it would appear, and no one is willing to do anything about it even when the depth and intensity of Israeli spying against the United States becomes evident, as has taken place with Jonathan Pollard in the 1980s and Jeffrey Epstein more recently, with the Epstein papers still being covered up! Pollard, who now lives in Israel where he is idolized, was the most damaging spy in US history. And then when one considers US government cover-ups, the ultimate has to also be all about Israel, when its warplanes and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty intelligence ship in international waters in the Mediterranean on June 8, 1967, killing 34 crewmen and wounding 170 more. The White House of Lyndon B. Johnson called back fighter planes launched from a US aircraft carrier to assist the Liberty and later engaged in a massive cover-up to absolve Israel from any blame as a case of “mistaken identity.” There exist, however, recordings that indicate that the Israeli pilots knew exactly whom they were attacking.

In my humble opinion Israel should be treated as an enemy or at a minimum as a state that is dangerous to have any association with. That is because it uses its immense power inside the United States establishment as well as with many other nations in Europe, Oceania and North America to incite for wars that bring no benefit to any country that allows them to influence or distort policy. The ongoing attempts by Israel to entice the United States into a war with Iran is only one example of what goes on and there are reports that US bombers have been taking up position in the Persian Gulf for a possible attack. And there are always the unspeakable things about Israel and how it does things. The Palestinian extermination is based on a perception among many Israeli Jews that both Christian and Muslim neighbors are not only “terrorists”, they are subhuman and fit only to work as slaves of Jews or to flee the country or die. Prominent St. Louis rabbi Jeffrey Abraham recently wrote that there are “no ‘innocent civilians’ in Gaza,” and endorsed the belief that Palestinians are “animals.” The lack of any discomfort in the local Jewish community demonstrates how widely accepted these views are. And, one might add, even American presidents are little more that ignorant goyim to be used and discarded or even subtly threatened. On Netanyahu’s recent visit to the White House, he presented Trump with a mounted Golden Pager, reminiscent perhaps of the exploding pagers used recently by Israel in Lebanon to kill and maim at random Lebanese civilians. It was a sick joke or perhaps even intended as a warning and it clearly was the product of the twisted mind of Netanyahu.

Far from being anyone’s “best friend” or “greatest ally” or being a democracy as the US media and congress constantly claim, Israel’s government does not even appear to value the lives of some Jews. The recent admission by the former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant that he had ordered the army to use the Hannibal Directive to kill Israeli civilians and soldiers during and after the Hamas attack on October 7^th 2023 confirms eye witness accounts of events that day. Israeli security policy includes the option of killing potential Jewish hostages so they do not become a need-to-use-negotiations obstacle hindering the options available in Israel’s use of force against whomever it is attacking. And don’t forget the Samson Option, the Armageddon-esque plan to use Israel’s secret nuclear weapons to take down both enemies and friends if the Jewish state is ever seriously threatened with destruction. There should be no doubt that the plan, like the Hannibal Directive, is for real and representative of Israeli government thinking and there is no reason to presume that the United States would not be included among those targeted. It is something to think about for every American who valued our country and the freedoms it provided before our politicians surrendered to Zion and allowed an “immensely powerful” largely domestic “fifth column” to obtain significant control for a foreign country over the national security policy of the United States of America.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

The West’s Support for Israel Is The #1 Threat To Free Speech

Caitlin Johnstone

https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/the-wests-support-for-israel-is-the-1-threat-to-free-speech-54563e3a32fa

President Trump has made a post on Truth Social saying federal funding will be cut to universities which allow “illegal protests” on their campuses, obliquely referring to pro-Palestine demonstrations against Israel’s genocidal atrocities.

“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” Trump said. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!”

Elise Stefanik, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the UN, made it clear that this was the Trump administration taking a position on “anti-Israel hate.”

“Antisemitism and anti-Israel hate will not be tolerated on American campuses,” tweeted Stefanik with a screenshot of Trump’s Truth Social post.

Trump’s declaration follows a completely insane statement from health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr which makes the targeting of pro-Palestine protests much more explicit.

“Anti-Semitism — like racism — is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues,” said Kennedy. “In recent years, the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly and virulent pestilence. Making America healthy means building communities of trust and mutual respect, based on speech freedom and open debate.”

Leaving aside Kennedy’s ridiculous claim that antisemitism “kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues” in modern times and all the weird mental contortions he’s performing to turn this into a Health and Human Services issue, conflating pro-Palestine protests with antisemitism and then claiming it needs to be eliminated as a “pestilence” squarely contradicts Kennedy’s asserted support for “speech freedom and open debate.”

Kennedy’s bat shits crazy remarks align with an accompanying statement from Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, who says, “Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses. Unlawful encampments and demonstrations have completely paralyzed day-to-day campus operations, depriving Jewish students of learning opportunities to which they are entitled.”

They are using the completely fictional narrative of “antisemitism” on university campuses to stomp out protests against Israeli atrocities in the United States. They couldn’t be more transparent about it. Which is why civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) immediately released statements denouncing this move by the Trump administration.

“It is disturbing to see the White House threatening freedom of speech and academic freedom on U.S. college campuses so blatantly,” said Cecillia Wang, legal director of the ACLU. “We stand in solidarity with university leaders in their commitment to free speech, open debate, and peaceful dissent on campus. Trump’s latest coercion campaign, attempting to turn university administrators against their own students and faculty, harkens back to the McCarthy era and is at odds with American constitutional values and the basic mission of universities.”

“Today’s message will cast an impermissible chill on student protests about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” says FIRE. “Paired with President Trump’s 2019 executive order adopting an unconstitutional definition of anti-Semitism, and his January order threatening to deport international students for engaging in protected expression, students will rationally fear punishment for wholly protected political speech.”

If you support freedom of speech you now have an ethical obligation to oppose Israel, even if you didn’t before.

Western governments’ support for Israel is the biggest threat to free speech in our society today. Civil rights are being stomped out throughout the western world to protect Israeli information interests, and speech is being suppressed in support of Israel more aggressively than with any other topic. We’re not seeing this level of all-out warfare against free expression on any other frontline — not Russia, not vaccines, not “election security”, not on any kind of ideological front. The west’s support for Israel is the number one threat to free speech in the west today, and nothing else comes anywhere close.

Trump’s latest announcement about “illegal protests” against Israel on university campuses is just the latest escalation in what has been an ongoing assault on all criticism of the Zionist entity. We’re seeing journalists and activists persecuted and fired for opposing Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza, protests violently shut down by police, new laws shoved through at alarming speed to help target pro-Palestine demonstrators, massive amounts of social media censorship across all major platforms — all while the mainstream press commit extremely egregious journalistic malpractice with obfuscations in their reporting and punditry designed to spin Israel’s abuses in a positive light.

Even if you’ve never cared about Israel before, you should be opposing it if you care about the existence of free speech in your society. Hell, you should be aggressively resisting this war on speech even if you support Israel. When civil liberties are being snuffed out one by one with increasing brazenness in defense of a foreign state, then everyone who claims to stand for freedom has an obligation to stand against it.

 

What is Egypt’s $53bn plan for Gaza reconstruction?

The five-year scheme seeks to bring back Palestinian Authority rule to Gaza and redevelop the enclave

By Sondos Asem

Published date: 4 March 2025 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/what-egypts-plan-gaza-reconstruction

Egypt proposed on Tuesday a $53bn plan for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip over five years, a text of which has been seen by Middle East Eye.

The proposal comes during the extraordinary Arab League summit held in Cairo as a reaction to US President Donald Trump’s declaration last month that he intends to take over Gaza and turn it into a tourism hub while displacing its Palestinian population. 

The Egyptian plan rejects the displacement of Palestinians and seeks to redevelop the enclave without depopulating it. 

It states that the Palestinian Authority (PA) will oversee the management of the reconstruction through a “Gaza Administration Committee” for the first six months.

The committee will be composed of technocrats and non-partisan members, operating under the umbrella of the Ramallah-based Palestinian government.  

Who will manage Gaza security?

According to the plan, Egypt and Jordan will train Palestinian police forces in preparation for their deployment in Gaza. 

The plan, however, states that this effort may include other countries in the future to provide political and financial support.

Then it proposes that the United Nations Security Council should consider the idea of “an international presence” in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. 

This, the plan states, could involve the deployment of international protection or peacekeeping forces, as part of the rebuilding process.

Concerning armed Palestinian factions such as Hamas, the plan refers to their existence as a “key challenge” and stresses that their presence will only be resolved permanently if the root causes of armed resistance are addressed through a political process that upholds Palestinian rights.

Confidence-building measures 

The plan is premised on the need for the two-state solution, and that there is no alternative to it.  

A medium-term truce should take place between Israel and the PA across the West Bank and Gaza, during which negotiations would be held and confidence-building measures determined, including the cessation of all unilateral actions by both sides.

Israel should cease all settlement activities, land annexation, home demolitions, military raids into Palestinian cities, and attempts to alter the legal and historical status of holy sites.

The plan foresees the end of all armed resistance activities if a peace agreement is reached to establish a Palestinian state and end Israeli occupation. 

How will the plan be implemented?

First, temporary housing will be provided for displaced people in Gaza during the reconstruction process through one of the following options:

1.   Designated areas within the Gaza Strip, with seven sites accommodating more than 1.5 million people. Displaced Palestinians will be housed in temporary housing units, each accommodating an average of six individuals.

o    Site 1: Rafah, with a capacity of approximately 213,000 people.

o    Site 2: Khan Younis, with a capacity of approximately 223,000 people.

o    Site 3: Deir al-Balah, with a capacity of approximately 184,000 people.

o    Site 4: Gaza City, with a capacity of approximately 353,000 people.

o    Site 5: North Gaza, with a capacity of approximately 197,000 people.

o    Site 6: Gaza City, with a capacity of approximately 176,000 people.

o    Site 7: Gaza City, with a capacity of approximately 176,000 people.

Timeline for implementation

Early recovery phase

• Duration: Six months
• Estimated cost: $3bn
• Key activities:
• Removal of rubble from the central axis (Salah al-Din Road) and other areas in Gaza, with debris transported toward coastal collection sites.
• Preparing this axis as a reconstruction corridor.
• Providing 200,000 prefabricated temporary housing units to accommodate 1.2 million people.
• Initiating repairs on 60,000 partially damaged housing units, aiming to accommodate 360,000 people once the restoration is completed in the next phase.

 

Reconstruction phases

Phase I:

• Duration: 2 years
• Estimated cost: $20bn
• Key activities:
• Completion of rubble removal.
• Restoration of 60,000 partially damaged units.
• Construction of 200,000 new permanent housing units to accommodate 1.6 million people.
• Rehabilitation of 20,000 acres of agricultural land.
• Development of essential infrastructure, including electricity, telecommunications and service buildings.
• Establishment of water supply, fire-fighting systems and sanitation, with:
• 2 desalination plants
• 2 drinking and firefighting water reservoirs
• 2 irrigation water reservoirs
• 2 wastewater treatment plants

Phase II:

• Duration: 2.5 years
• Estimated cost: $30bn
• Key activities:
• Continued development of infrastructure and service facilities.
• Construction of an additional 200,000 permanent housing units to accommodate 1.2 million people, increasing the total number of permanent housing units to 460,000, sufficient for 3 million residents.
• Development of a 600-acre industrial zone.
• Construction of:
• A fishing port
• A commercial seaport
• Gaza International Airport
• Implementation of the first phase of the coastal road (Al-Rasheed Road), extending 10 km.

How will it be funded?

The total funding required for the reconstruction plan is estimated at $53bn, divided as follows:

1.     Early recovery phase:

o    $3bn for demining, rubble removal, temporary housing, and partial restoration of damaged buildings.

2.     Phase I of reconstruction (until 2027):

o    $20bn for infrastructure, service buildings, permanent housing units and agricultural land rehabilitation.

3.     Phase II of reconstruction (until 2030):

o    $30bn for completing infrastructure, building industrial zones, ports and an airport.

Funding sources must be diversified and coordinated, including:

• UN agencies, international financial institutions, donor countries, investment funds, development agencies and development banks.
• Foreign direct investment from multinational companies.
• Civil society organisations, which play a key role in mobilising financial resources for recovery and reconstruction efforts.

The plan adds that for the sake of transparency and efficiency, an internationally supervised trust fund will be established to manage financial commitments and oversee expenditures.