00:00:04
Come build your house in Gaza.
00:00:07
Last January 2024, that was the message
00:00:10
you could hear at the Victory of Israel
00:00:12
conference. A conference organized by
00:00:14
the settler colonial group Nala and
00:00:16
attended by nearly a third of
00:00:17
Netanyahu's cabinet and 15 members of
00:00:19
the Knesset. Come build your house in
00:00:22
Gaza was the message at the top of a map
00:00:24
like this. a map of the strip split into
00:00:28
15 or so renamed neighborhoods. At this
00:00:30
Victory of Israel conference, attendees
00:00:32
were given little wooden houses like
00:00:34
these and encouraged to put their names
00:00:36
on them, then place them on this map in
00:00:38
the neighborhoods they'd like to settle
00:00:40
in one day. The map calls this plan the
00:00:43
new Gaza.
00:00:49
Howdy friends, JT from the future here.
00:00:51
I just wanted to take a quick second to
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Thanks for your support. All right, back
00:02:48
to the video. Fantasies of what Gaza
00:02:51
might look like in the future, like this
00:02:53
one, are on a lot of minds. Israel's
00:02:56
USbacked onslaught has destroyed or
00:02:58
damaged 92% of all homes in Gaza and
00:03:02
most major infrastructure. And what
00:03:04
happens next is a question that
00:03:05
seemingly a lot of people who aren't
00:03:08
Palestinian have answers to. Last year,
00:03:11
for example, Netanyahu unveiled Gaza
00:03:14
2035, a plan to turn Gaza over to
00:03:17
Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and
00:03:19
Morocco and let them run the show until
00:03:21
Gaza looks like a bad AI render. or just
00:03:25
recently the Arab League also proposed
00:03:27
its own plan with its own projects for
00:03:29
the area complete with a new airport,
00:03:31
two seapports and an industrial zone.
00:03:34
But above all others, one person in
00:03:37
particular has had a lot to say. I'm
00:03:41
committed to buying and owning Gaza.
00:03:44
Build beautiful communities for the 1.9
00:03:46
million people. We'll build beautiful
00:03:48
communities, safe communities. Could be
00:03:49
five, six, could be two. Think of it as
00:03:52
a real estate development for the
00:03:54
future. The Riviera of the Middle East.
00:03:57
The US will take over the Gaza Strip and
00:04:00
we will do a job with it, too. We'll own
00:04:03
it and be responsible for dismantling
00:04:06
all of the dangerous unexloded bombs and
00:04:08
other weapons on the site. Level the
00:04:10
site and get rid of the destroyed
00:04:13
buildings. Level it out. create an
00:04:15
economic development that will supply
00:04:18
unlimited numbers of jobs and housing
00:04:21
for the people of the area. For the past
00:04:24
few months, we've seen Trump broadcast
00:04:26
his plan for Gaza, a plan to turn the
00:04:28
area into what he's calling a Riviera.
00:04:31
According to Trump, this project will
00:04:33
usher in economic growth, safe housing,
00:04:36
and even jobs for Palestinians in the
00:04:38
strip, transforming Gaza from its
00:04:40
current state into an economic hub and
00:04:42
tourist destination on the Mediterranean
00:04:44
coast. It's all deeply disturbing for
00:04:47
relatively obvious reasons, but one in
00:04:51
particular. These plans do all seem to
00:04:54
presuppose some kind of ethnic
00:04:56
cleansing. They seem to acknowledge and
00:05:00
to be based on the sort of current
00:05:03
genocidal practices of Israel and the
00:05:06
you know their backers in the US. This
00:05:09
is Kareem Rabia, associate professor of
00:05:11
anthropology at University of Illinois
00:05:13
at Chicago and the author of Palestine
00:05:16
is throwing a party and the whole world
00:05:17
is invited. Like Kareem just said,
00:05:20
Trump's concept of a plan for Gaza
00:05:22
starts with the emptying out of the
00:05:25
strip, or in more accurate terms, ethnic
00:05:28
cleansing. Something that the Trump
00:05:30
admin isn't even trying to hide. You're
00:05:33
talking about
00:05:35
probably a million and a half people.
00:05:37
And we just clean out that whole thing.
00:05:42
And to understand how we got here with
00:05:44
naked statements of ethnic cleansing
00:05:46
barely breaking into the news cycle, we
00:05:48
need to look a little farther back with
00:05:51
Trump's deal of the century. Deal of the
00:05:54
century. Deal of the century. Deal of
00:05:56
the century. My vision for peace,
00:05:59
prosperity, and a brighter future for
00:06:03
Israelis and Palestinians. So that plan
00:06:07
is announced if I'm not mistaken in in
00:06:10
2020 with the peace to prosperity
00:06:13
initiative led by Jared Kushner uh being
00:06:16
about a year in advance uh of that and
00:06:19
in some sense it is taking the results
00:06:24
the very negative obviously for uh
00:06:28
Palestinians uh results of the stalled
00:06:32
and degenerating effects of the
00:06:35
so-called Oslo process and tried to give
00:06:37
them a spin very much in keeping with
00:06:40
kind of real estate development
00:06:43
mentality that is is Kushner's uh style
00:06:47
so to speak right so the notion there
00:06:49
was really to crystallize consolidate I
00:06:53
think the depoliticization
00:06:56
the kind of politicide of Palestine and
00:07:00
to incorporate this termination of any
00:07:05
possibility for Palestinian resistance
00:07:06
or anything like substantive
00:07:08
self-determination or sovereignty in the
00:07:11
in the broader context. This is Alberto
00:07:14
Toscano. He's the author of late
00:07:16
fascism. And according to him and to
00:07:18
Kareem, plans like the deal of the
00:07:21
century, this plan to sort of solve the
00:07:23
Israel Palestine debate with economic
00:07:25
incentives targeting Palestinian
00:07:27
middle-class aspirations and US
00:07:28
businessmen set the stage for where we
00:07:31
are today. So I did research in the West
00:07:35
Bank on um on real estate development
00:07:37
and privatization. Uh the main the main
00:07:40
sort of period of my research was 2009
00:07:42
2010 although I was sort of tracking it
00:07:45
and traveling all the time from like
00:07:47
2007 to 2018 or 19 or so. And so I when
00:07:51
I started doing this research this large
00:07:54
real estate development project called
00:07:56
the Wabi started to come online. It kind
00:07:58
of pierced the public imaginary when I
00:07:59
was there. They started putting up signs
00:08:01
advertising it, billboards advertising
00:08:04
it, things like that. And what it what
00:08:06
it is is um is a large uh mega
00:08:08
development project funded by now
00:08:10
probably about a billion dollars, mostly
00:08:12
coming from Qatar um to to to be the
00:08:16
home to supposedly 40,000 middle-ass
00:08:19
Palestinians. They say, you know, this
00:08:21
is a Palestinian project. It it uses um
00:08:24
Palestinian vernacular architecture
00:08:26
somewhat. It's green. It's of the
00:08:29
environment. It's about sort of our
00:08:30
place and our uh ties to the homeland
00:08:33
and and and things like this. The
00:08:36
project Kareem is describing is one in a
00:08:38
long line of development plans that have
00:08:40
been proposed for Palestine. Plans that
00:08:42
all came from a similar place, a place
00:08:44
where a few economic incentives would be
00:08:46
given to Palestinians in exchange for
00:08:48
accepting their status as an exiled
00:08:51
population who would never get the right
00:08:53
to return. And if they didn't like it,
00:08:55
the backup was always the threat of
00:08:57
total elimination.
00:09:00
And I suppose we see that also playing
00:09:02
out even in the kind of plans then
00:09:06
presented on the back of peace of
00:09:09
prosperity or so-called deal of the
00:09:11
century by Netanyahu himself you know
00:09:13
envisaging this logistical and economic
00:09:16
integration of the you know Gaza Strip
00:09:20
into an economic region in which Israel
00:09:22
would be integrated with Saudi Arabia
00:09:23
and Egypt and you would have this kind
00:09:26
of system of you know expert processing
00:09:28
zones and so on and so forth again
00:09:31
entirely predicated as was evident in
00:09:33
Netanyahu's performance back then at the
00:09:36
United Nations with the you know
00:09:38
elimination of any sign of Palestine
00:09:40
from the map right this was then
00:09:42
presented by Kushner you know as much of
00:09:46
this Oslo process has been presented as
00:09:48
well in some regards as uh benefiting
00:09:51
you know so-called Palestinian civil
00:09:53
society allowing opportunities for
00:09:56
economic and financial improvement and
00:09:59
so on and so forth. So in some sense
00:10:01
presented as a trade-off right between
00:10:04
the full abdication of any attempt to
00:10:10
gain any substantive forms of
00:10:12
sovereignty and in exchange some horizon
00:10:16
however fatuous or receding of economic
00:10:18
prosperity as the you know argument as
00:10:21
the title of the of the project went.
00:10:24
But when we talked to these two authors,
00:10:26
something was clear about where we are
00:10:28
today. If the old deal for Palestinians
00:10:31
was give up on your homeland in exchange
00:10:33
for maybe 10% of you living something
00:10:35
like a middle class life, the New Deal
00:10:37
is something else entirely. But I think
00:10:40
we're really in a different moment now.
00:10:42
I think that the contrast now and in
00:10:44
answer to your question is that we still
00:10:46
have something like that, but the sort
00:10:48
of like human development aspects of it,
00:10:50
the aspirational aspects of it are just
00:10:52
gone in the Gaza case. Trump doesn't say
00:10:55
we're going to buy and redevelop it. He
00:10:58
says we're going to own it. The the
00:10:59
capitalist logics that are emanating
00:11:01
from, you know, from Israel and from the
00:11:03
US no longer sort of have the the kind
00:11:05
of liberal developmental vision that
00:11:07
they did at one point. There is no
00:11:09
assumption that this is for Palestinians
00:11:11
at all. Right? It is premised completely
00:11:14
on ethnic cleansing. Trump's plan is
00:11:17
clear. Empty Gaza and fill it with
00:11:20
luxury condos that won't be for
00:11:22
Palestinians. And it's not complicated
00:11:24
to see how we got here. The last two
00:11:27
years of Democrats backing a genocide
00:11:29
uncritically, funneling billions of
00:11:31
dollars of weapons to Israel, and
00:11:33
constantly refusing to sanction Israel's
00:11:35
atrocities have completely dehumanized
00:11:38
Palestinians to the point that the very
00:11:40
idea of innocent Palestinians has been
00:11:43
denied by senior political figures. In
00:11:46
this genocide, both sides of the aisle
00:11:48
abandoned the people of Gaza and in the
00:11:51
process turned them into this utterly
00:11:53
disposable population that countries
00:11:55
like the US and Israel can now just
00:11:57
apparently command to abandon their
00:11:59
lands at any time with little to no push
00:12:01
back. Lands, by the way, that are
00:12:04
incredibly important, especially because
00:12:07
of Trump's real estate background. The
00:12:09
very terms in which it was being talked
00:12:11
about, you know, was in terms of, you
00:12:13
know, we here have not a territory or a
00:12:16
country but a plot, you know, kind of
00:12:20
like a real estate a space already
00:12:22
imagined, right, in a real estate uh
00:12:25
optic which has been rendered unto
00:12:29
waste. And of course, Trump treated this
00:12:31
as just like a like a natural
00:12:33
occurrence, right? You know, it's kind
00:12:35
of like the mentality of of somebody
00:12:37
coming in after the proverbial hurricane
00:12:40
or natural disaster rather than in terms
00:12:42
of a genocidal war funded by the US. So
00:12:45
the idea is that you have a project of
00:12:47
of property development. Indeed, this is
00:12:49
something that Trump himself did, right?
00:12:50
and he was a property developer in uh in
00:12:54
Manhattan in particular, right? He
00:12:55
basically wanted to redevelop this
00:12:57
building and just stopped uh all of the
00:13:00
the electricity, the water from working,
00:13:03
turned it into, you know, an infernal
00:13:05
indeed unlivable place in order to get
00:13:07
the people to leave not having to pay
00:13:09
them off the amount of money that he
00:13:11
needed to pay them off in order to
00:13:12
redevelop. Right? So that's a kind of
00:13:14
you know the kind of renovation logic
00:13:18
and the way that it was spoken about was
00:13:20
in terms of you know nobody would want
00:13:21
to live that we will you know clean it
00:13:23
up and and redevelop it but in the
00:13:25
meantime the population will be
00:13:27
somewhere else and this will be
00:13:29
redeveloped in Trump's terms right in
00:13:31
Gaza Trump is recycling something he's
00:13:34
done for 40 years and this approach it
00:13:37
turns out is incredibly compatible with
00:13:39
a long-term project that's enraptured
00:13:41
the Israeli right wing for decades at
00:13:43
this point. I think there's probably a
00:13:46
struggle within the state of Israel now
00:13:48
that the, you know, the sort of like
00:13:50
genocidal and fascist block is in the
00:13:52
center of the government. I think that
00:13:53
they're probably, you know, this is a
00:13:55
moment for them where they can realize a
00:13:57
lot of the things that they have have
00:13:59
wanted to realize for um for decades, if
00:14:02
not longer, the complete takeover of
00:14:04
Palestine and the removal of of
00:14:06
Palestinians from from more and more
00:14:08
parts of it. The logic that Trump is
00:14:11
using to justify these plans that are so
00:14:13
attractive to those on the Israeli
00:14:15
right, it's actually a very old idea,
00:14:17
older even than Trump's tenant
00:14:19
harassment in the 80s. The idea I'm
00:14:22
talking about is that land belongs to
00:14:24
whoever will make the most profit from
00:14:26
it. That's an idea that comes from John
00:14:28
Lockach, a major political philosopher
00:14:31
of the 17th century and in many ways the
00:14:33
moral architect of the colonization of
00:14:35
America and genocide of the Native
00:14:37
Americans.
00:14:39
See, whoever has the most power can't
00:14:41
just go around doing whatever they want.
00:14:44
They need a moral theory to point to
00:14:46
when they do bad things and explain it
00:14:48
away like it's not a bad thing. And for
00:14:50
capitalism, the ultimate moral virtue
00:14:53
has always been profit. According to
00:14:56
Loach, then if the Native Americans
00:14:58
weren't making the land quote useful and
00:15:01
productive, if they weren't turning it
00:15:03
for a profit, then they deserved to be
00:15:06
removed, killed with impunity, and for
00:15:08
their existence to quite literally be
00:15:10
erased from the map. That argument
00:15:13
hasn't gone away.
00:15:16
Palestine is being treated by Trump,
00:15:18
Netanyahu, and the Arab League not as
00:15:20
the home of several million people with
00:15:22
a history, a culture, and a place of
00:15:25
personal attachment, but as just another
00:15:27
lot to make money. So I was at the pal
00:15:30
the second Palestine investors
00:15:31
conference and um and it was just after
00:15:33
the the Mavi Mara sort of attempted to
00:15:36
to break the the blockade of Kazip and
00:15:39
there was you know there were sort of
00:15:41
discussions about should they cancel the
00:15:42
the conference and and what have you and
00:15:45
ultimately like they just had the flags
00:15:46
of staff ma half flags at half mass and
00:15:49
then it it sort of proceeded and I
00:15:51
remember like on this point of the sort
00:15:54
of the the developers and the
00:15:55
capitalists like believing in their
00:15:57
vision I remember being at one the uh
00:15:59
one of the panels and there was a guy
00:16:01
who was saying you know we are business
00:16:03
people we're Palestinians you know we
00:16:06
should do this as part of our national
00:16:08
duty as part of our national duty as
00:16:10
Palestinians we should come back we
00:16:11
should invest in Palestine we should
00:16:12
bring capital back and he said make no
00:16:14
mistake there are returns to be made
00:16:16
here obviously that was you know
00:16:18
interesting and strange language to me
00:16:20
as a Palestinian because that's not
00:16:21
usually how we talk about return we talk
00:16:23
about the return from exile but I I like
00:16:26
that sort of said to me that you know
00:16:27
these people have a vision and many of
00:16:30
them believe in it. It's just not my
00:16:33
vision and it's just not one that I
00:16:36
think is plausibly the basis for return
00:16:39
or self-determination or sovereignty.
00:16:42
What we're seeing in Gaza is complete
00:16:44
destruction and dispossession in the
00:16:47
service of profit and territorial gain.
00:16:50
And it's a mirror image of what is
00:16:51
taking shape here. Here, like there, the
00:16:55
number one goal of the Trump government
00:16:57
is making capitalists more money. In
00:17:00
their eyes, everyone else is disposable.
00:17:03
Every other government function is
00:17:05
worthless. Everything else is
00:17:07
unnecessary. Their only framework for
00:17:10
deciding good from bad is their personal
00:17:13
monetary gain. And that means
00:17:16
personhood, democracy, rights to free
00:17:19
speech, and personal safety. They'll
00:17:21
give all of those up in exchange for
00:17:24
number go up. The plans in Gaza are
00:17:27
vague. What will actually happen to
00:17:29
Palestinians? We have no idea. But
00:17:32
what's already happened is horrifyingly
00:17:35
clear. Land grabs are back and people
00:17:38
don't matter. Only the wallets of the
00:17:41
rich and powerful do.
