Smotrich says Israel working with Trump on 'real estate bonanza' in Gaza Strip

Israel’s finance minister said the Gaza Strip is “a real estate bonanza” and Israel has shared a plan with the US on how to divide it up, multiple Israeli news outlets reported on Wednesday.

Speaking at a real estate conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel had carried out “the first phase of urban renewal” by demolishing Gaza, and it was now working on a plan to start rebuilding it, saying the plans were now “on President Trump’s desk”.

“We have poured a lot of money into this war,” he said. “We have to see how we are dividing up the land in percentages."

Smotrich’s comments give further weight to President Donald Trump's announcement in February when he touted the US "taking over" the Gaza Strip and redeveloping it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, while forcibly relocating Palestinians to other countries.

At the time, he said he envisioned “world people living there. The world's people. I think you'll make that into an international, unbelievable place."

Trump's initial announcement was met with international outcry at the time, but since then, Trump has seemed to have shelved the plan, while Israeli officials have continued to promote it.

Seven months later, a post-war Gaza plan circulating in Washington at the beginning of September showed proposals to turn the enclave into a Dubai-like, revenue-generating hub using mass surveillance, population displacement, and land appropriation. 

The fleshed-out proposal brought Trump's purported "Gaza Riviera" plans to life, including world-class resorts and artificial islands, with Palestinians being paid $5,000 per person to leave their land.

The reconstruction proposal of Gaza was first reported by The Financial Times and then published in full by The Washington Post. 

It was reportedly led by Michael Eisenberg, an Israeli-American venture capitalist, and Liran Tancman, an Israeli tech entrepreneur and former military intelligence officer.

The duo was part of an informal group of Israeli officials and businesspeople that first conceived of the widely discredited Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in late 2023.

Earlier this month, Middle East Eye reported that plans for a “Gaza Riviera” were doomed to fail because it is economically unviable, as it would rely on a global elite aligned with Israel while overlooking ethnic cleansing in return for profits.