Abandon the Impossible

A tremendous amount of ink has been spilled recently as a result of President Trump’s offhand remark that the US would take over Gaza, while the Palestinians would go…somewhere. All the usual suspects of the punditry hopped into the discussion, which broke in completely predictable directions. Pro- vs. anti-Trump; pro- vs. anti-Netanyahu; pro-Palestinian vs. pro-Israeli, left wing vs. right wing, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

The problem is that all the pundits are asking the wrong question. They are asking if Gaza should be reconstructed. But that’s not the real, much less the relevant, question. It’s not: should Gaza be reconstructed? It’s: could Gaza be reconstructed?

The answer is no.

To understand why, let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine you never heard of Gaza, Israel, Hamas, UNWRA, Netanyahu, anything you associate with the Middle East. And you were asked this question: what do you think of the idea of finding a spot in a desert, in arguably the most water and heat stressed area of the world, and putting up a massive, dense urban complex for 2.1 million people? And not for just any group of people, but rather for people who have publicly declared that they will go to war with their neighbor and risk the danger of a catastrophic retaliation. And not just in any spot in the desert, but a place where, before any building can begin, massive remediation has to take place because the area is heavily polluted, subjected to flood in many hundred locations, covered with astronomical amounts of rubble, and filled with unexploded ordinance.

Oh, I forgot: all this in an area where there is no drinkable water.

From any objective point of view, such a suggestion is just plain nuts. Certifiably insane. But that is exactly what you would need to do in order to rebuild Gaza. Consider the numbers. The amount of rubble in Gaza is the equivalent of 12 Great Pyramids of Giza. Just removing the rubble is estimated to cost $1.2 billion and take 15 years. The UN estimates that rebuilding Gaza will require $50 billion and take 16 years. On top of that the area will need at least two fairly large desalination plants and a massive wastewater and sewage treatment facility, costing around $3 billion, plus the infrastructure of pipes, drains, etc. necessary for these facilities to work. So the annual cost over a 15 year period is roughly $4 billion plus the “normal” $700 million currently offered in yearly foreign aid.

Coming up with that money would require something like a third of the Marshall plan which rebuilt Europe after WW 2. To call that level of foreign contribution, for that length of time, “wildly unrealistic” would be an understatement. Who would be prepared to pay that kind of money? The U.S.? Dream on. Israel? After Oct. 7?! Not a chance. The U.N.? UNWRA struggles to supply $1 billion, and that figure is going down because of UNWRA’s damaged credibility. Arab nations? You’d be lucky to get $500 million.

On top of that, let us remember that there is every reason to think that Hamas will divert as many resources as it can to rebuilding tunnels, making rockets, etc. And then using them, which will make matters 100 times worse. And just for the record, this is not me making disparaging speculations about Hamas and the Palestinians. Hamas has openly declared that they will commit one Oct. 7 after another.

So who in their right mind would be prepared to pump billions and tens of billions of dollars into Gaza knowing full well that it could, and probably would, all get blown away in a split second?

And all of this, let us not forget, in a region in desperate need of climate change mitigation efforts. Last year, Israel experienced 12 days with temperatures at dangerous levels of 103 and above. That number is expected to increase dramatically. One can beat the heat to some extent with air-conditioning, but exactly how much air conditioning will the Palestinians of Gaza have access to? And at what cost? And with what environmental impact? Ever been in Manhattan in the summer? That’s what happens when you combine millions of ac units with millions of cubic feet of concrete.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. If the heat don’t getcha, the flash floods will. It used to be that flash floods in Israel were limited to the Negev and the Dead Sea area, sweeping away the occasional hiker or tourist bus. Now the floods are coming to the Mediterranean coast. Ashdod, just a few miles from Gaza, recently experienced rain coming down at 5 inches an hour (the same rate as the catastrophic floods that devastated North Carolina a few months ago). Rain like that could overwhelm a sewage treatment system in a matter of minutes. And there are 360 areas in Gaza already prone to flooding from storms.

The bottom line is that rebuilding Gaza just won’t work. That will be a source of great disappointment for all who wish for a different outcome. But all the protestations about the “Right of Return”, the Geneva Convention, Amnesty International, settler colonialism, are doomed to fail. One can sputter endlessly about “No justice, no peace,” or shout “Intifada Revolution!” until you are blue in the face. One might sincerely wish that things were different. They ought to be. Unfortunately, getting from “is” to “ought” on this one is damn near impossible, and the impossible remains the impossible no matter how much it “ought” to be different. Hume said, “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.” There is simply no evidence to support the thesis that the Palestinians could successfully rebuild Gaza. Insisting that this unrealistic goal is what “ought” to be is something that should be left to those who, from the safety of their college campus, are prepared to fight to the very last Palestinian.

As jarring as my perspective may seem, it appears to me that it fits perfectly into a recurring pattern of catastrophe for the Arabs throughout the Arab-Israeli conflict. A series of choices have been made that result in ever-shrinking prospects for Arab well-being. The Peel Commission recommendations of 1937 were better than the Partition Plan of 1947; 1947 was better than 1949 when the dust settled from the War of Independence. 1949 was better than 1967 when Judea and Samaria came back into Jewish hands; 1967 was better than 2000 when the 2nd intifada began; and finally, Oct. 6 was a damn sight better than Oct. 7 (unless your conception of victory is standing on a pile of rubble that used to be your home flashing a V-for-victory sign). Every time bad decisions are made, the options for the Palestinians shrink, and this leads to conditions that previously were nowhere on anyone’s radar screen.

The combination of the devastating aftermath of Oct. 7 and the presidency of Donald Trump has dramatically shifted the Overton window on the future prospects for the Palestinians, and I would suggest that the starting point for new thinking should be a keen awareness of what is, and is not, in the realm of possibility.

Rebuilding Gaza is not.