Reconstruction of Gaza - realistic?

Well unless you can see into the future there’s no particular reason to believe your vision of the future but it does suggest your first thoughts were not for the Israelis who has just been attacked, kidnapped, raped or murdered by terrorists.

Equally, polls suggest that the majority of the population in Gaza still support Hamas and their 7/10 attack and don't want them disarmed... does that make the whole of Gaza evil? I don't think so and neither do you probably. Survey results from October 2025:

Palestinian opinion is polarized: the Trump Plan is widely known but support is split, with Gazans more favorable than West Bankers. Majorities back Hamas’s response yet reject disarming Hamas; most doubt the plan will end the war or deliver statehood. A leadership crisis endures—dissatisfaction with Abbas and the PA, Marwan Barghouti leading, and Hamas outpolling Fatah. Since Oct 7, support for the attack persists even as expectations of Hamas victory wane. Gazans are more open to negotiated arrangements;` West Bankers favor armed struggle. Across both, skepticism of external plans coexists with demands for elections and self-defense

www.pcpsr.org/en/node/1000

And the Palestinians would be gone.

Let me tell you a story. Oct 7th was a Saturday and on the following Wednesday, I went to our usual pub quiz which we do most weeks. Someone asked me, knowing I follow Middle East affairs, what I thought would happen following the atrocities. I told them then that in ten to twenty years, Netanyahu would be sitting in a five star resort in Gaza with some of the billionaire so called leaders of Hamas, sipping champagne and toasting the billions they've made in property development. I believed it then and I still have no reason not to believe it now.

I don't endorse your world view that literally everything is Israel's fault. Hamas are funded primarily by Qatar, Iran and Turkey.

Though Israel has allowed Qatar to give hundreds of millions of dollars in aid through Hamas, this money was not intended by Israel to be used for the purpose it was used re building the tunnel network etc.

From NBC news in October 2023:

The unemployment rate in Gaza is 47% and more than 80% of its population lives in poverty, according to the United Nations. Hamas, however, has funded an armed force of thousands equipped with rockets and drones and built a vast web of tunnels under Gaza. Estimates of its annual military budget range from $100 million to $350 million, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources.

Since coming to power in the Gaza Strip 17 years ago, Hamas has filled its coffers with hundreds of millions in international aid, overt and covert injections of cash from Iran and other ideological partners, as well as cryptocurrency, taxes, extortion and smuggling, according to current and former U.S. officials and regional experts.

Much of the money is public and legal, including large sums of financial aid from Qatar via the United Nations, an arrangement encouraged and approved by Israel. The Qatari aid covers the salaries of civil servants, buys fuel for the power grid and provides cash to needy families.

Some of it is less than legal, according to experts. In addition to levying taxes on Gaza’s businesses and residents, Hamas imposes unofficial fees on smuggled goods and other activity, for a combined income of up to $450 million per year. Hamas also has real estate and other investments around the globe, despite international restrictions, and uses cryptocurrency to mask some of its transactions.

Some of it may be fully illegal. A small portion of its budget seems to come from smuggling in South America, including drug smuggling.

www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-plagued-poverty-hamas-no-shortage-cash-come-rcna121099

That's a very depressing opinion which I don't agree with but time will tell I guess which countries are involved in the rebuilding of Gaza and how it looks in 20 years time.

What part of Hamas being a corrupt violent government did you not understand. They were financially supported by Israel as a puppet to sow discord and chaos.

Could you explain how a state can be evil? You might think ndividuals elected to power are 'evil' though its pretty extreme. But how can a state be evil?

As I said, all talk of rebuilding Gaza for the Palestinians is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. The only investment will be to build an israeli riviera.

So Hamas had no choice but to spend most of the aid money on building their own ranks and planning more violence?

They made their choices and this is the result.

Anyway, this thread is about the future and the reconstruction of Gaza so I don't want to divert from that.

Yes I know investors expect a profit but what's the alternative? No one invest in Gaza?

Even if you're right and Israel are forced to make reparations, Gaza will still need investment from other countries. In all the various schemes about how Gaza can be rebuilt, there isn't one that says, "let Israel do it all".

I'm a realist. How are you supposed to develop an open air prison under an air, sea and land blockade when the prison guards regularly mow the grass as they have admitted on so many occasions.

Israel "played the long game" by withdrawing completely from Gaza in 2005... right.

Of course Hamas could have "played the long game" too by actually choosing to spend all the millions received in aid to, I don't know, help local people build good lives. Instead they wasted most of it on planning more hate filled attacks like 7/10 ....building tunnels, buying weapons, etc.

Obsessing over Israel's "evil intention" while letting Hamas off the hook completely sounds like an unhealthy fixation on one country to me. The whole world doesn't see things as single-mindedly as that, thank goodness.

I’m wondering whether some people know what the word investment means! An investor invests for the sake of making a profit. You seriously think anyone is going to ‘invest’ in Gaza to give the property to Gazans to live in because they certainly won’t be able to afford to buy it. Anyone investing in Gaza is going to be selling to soulless ghouls who don’t care that an entire people have been wiped out and the property they’ve bought is built on the bones of murdered children.

It is hard to imagine.

But cities like Dresden have managed to recover and the centre of Dresden was almost completely destroyed by Allied bombing in WW2.

You think israel is not capable of playing the long game? Pull out of Gaza, isolate it totally, finance a corrupt violent government and have them vilified internationally, ‘mow the grass’ regularly to encourage hatred, then wait; or even worse; for the opportunity to go in and destroy the entire place in order to ethnically cleanse and call it ‘encouraging voluntary emigration’, a term they didn’t invent. This isn’t a plan that was simply devised in 2005, this is just the latest iteration of Plan Dalet and israel’s evil intention to eventually realising greater israel. I sincerely hope that they have miscalculated this time and the entire world will now see israel for what it is, a rogue, terrorist, pariah state that will eventually be totally isolated internationally.

Ive never understood this about war. How a place bombed into obliteration, recovers to a habitable state....

Just to clarify are you saying that the actual current population would be able to return in a few years to housing and infrastructure built for them or is it something that would be an ideal in the future?

And where would they go in the meantime that would finance the huge cost?

As it stands Hamas is still in Gaza and the closest thing they have to a government. Historically every bit of aid, building materials etc would be diverted into propping up Hamas, building tunnels and the like. Understandably this scares away pretty much every sensible potential investor.

I hope Western countries don’t get involved as it would only be taken as oppression or worse.

And to be honest, there is something unpalatable about rich Western countries rebuilding Gaza for a big profit- which is the only way investors would be prepared to take the huge risk involved.

There are rich countries in the Middle East that could afford it like the UAE & Qatar, and I think the optics would look better. Those who are sheltering Hamas could start with freezing their bank accounts and taking that money for reconstruction. Doubt ME countries would be doing it without intending to make a big profit either.

Maybe there will after all become a humanitarian argument to manage voluntary migration for some time with right to return

@mids2019 I have seen you argue for voluntary migration across many threads, could you explain what does it look like to you?. Who will take the 2 million impoverished refugees and house and feed them until an unknown date in the future when they can return?

It isn’t obvious at all.

It’s a point of view but it’s also a point of view that Israel didn’t ask to be attacked on 7/10/23. And if they hadn’t been, Gaza would still be as it was on that date.

Thats why opinions differ as to who is ultimately responsible for the destruction of Gaza. To some people, Hamas were the aggressors. Though it’s certainly unusual to pick a fight with an enemy so much stronger than yourself for obvious reasons.