United Arab Emirates plans to bankroll first ‘planned community’ in south Gaza

Original article by Cate Brown in Washington

The United Arab Emirates plans to fund “Gaza’s first planned community” on the ruined outskirts of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. Palestinian residents there will have access to basic services like education, healthcare and running water, as long as they submit to biometric data collection and security vetting, according to planning documents and people familiar with the latest round of talks at the US-led Civil Military Coordination Center in Israel.

The planned city would mark the UAE’s first investment in a postwar reconstruction project located in the part of Gaza currently held by Israel. The wealthy Gulf state has contributed more than $1.8bn of humanitarian assistance to Gaza since 7 October 2023, according to UAE state media, making it Gaza’s largest humanitarian donor.

Blueprints for the Emirati-backed endeavor are laid out in an unclassified slide deck obtained by the Guardian and first reported by Dropsite, but the UAE’s role as its planned financier has not previously been reported. The presentation was prepared for a cohort of European donors who visited the CMCC on 14 January, according to an aid official who shared details about the briefing on the condition of anonymity. Israeli military planners have given the plans their stamp of approval.

Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and Josh Gruenbaum, all members or advisers to the US-led Board of Peace, arrived on Friday in Abu Dhabi to broker peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators. The Gulf ally agreed to host the landmark trilateral meeting after pledging its support for several US-led efforts, including the Board of Peace.

The group is newly mandated to oversee reconstruction efforts in Gaza, following Donald Trump’s endorsement of its founding charter on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The United Arab Emirates did not comment on its decision to endorse the Board of Peace, or its plans to fund one of the first US- and Israeli-backed reconstruction projects in Gaza.

One US official said that the first Emirati-backed compound could “become a model” for a string of residential camps that US and Israeli officials have described as “alternative safe communities”.

Within the first Rafah community, billed as a “case study”, planners envision several efforts to prevent the influence of Hamas, including the introduction of electronic shekel wallets “to mitigate the diversion of goods and funds to the Hamas financial channels”, and a school curriculum that will “not be Hamas-based”, but supplied by the UAE. Planners also specify that residents will be permitted to “enter and exit the neighborhood freely, subject to security checks to prevent the introduction of weapons and hostile elements”.

Plans do not indicate who will conduct security checks at the entry and exit points of the planned community.

Any new residential compounds will be built atop of the rubble left from Israel’s two-year war on Gaza – an assault that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians and leveled three-quarters of the structures in Gaza amid Israel’s efforts to rout out Hamas militants after their deadly 7 October attack.

Rebuilding Gaza will cost at least $70bn, according to the United Nations, which estimates that at least three-quarters of Gaza’s roads, water pipes and buildings have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombardment.

UN experts estimate that rebuilding efforts could take up to 80 years, given the level of destruction. Clearing debris, disarming unexploded ordnance and retrieving bodies trapped under the rubble could all complicate the process.

‘New Rafah’

Under the terms of Trump’s brokered peace agreement, Gaza is now divided into two halves: a “green zone”, controlled by the Israeli military; and a “red zone”, in effect governed by Hamas. Initial reconstruction efforts are only slated for the Israeli-held half of Gaza.

Kushner dispensed with the artificial red zone and green zone divisions during a presentation at Davos on Thursday, where he unveiled Board of Peace ambitions to redevelop Gaza’s entire Mediterranean coast. On a slide titled “master plan”, Kushner’s group re-envisioned a map of Gaza featuring eight “residential areas” spanning Gaza, including two development blocks called Rafah 1 and Rafah 2.

The first city, called “New Rafah” in the Board of Peace slide deck, would be built during an early phase of Trump’s 20-point peace plan. The Board of Peace plans promise 100,000 permanent housing units, 200 education centers and 75 medical facilities in the new city.

A White House spokesperson said that the Emirati-backed compound would be built during the board’s initial reconstruction push.

Land-clearing efforts for the Rafah site are already under way, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson told the Guardian.

“Israel’s mission on the east side of the yellow line is to clear the infrastructure in that territory, including tunnels, booby-trapped houses – all of the infrastructure left on our side,” the IDF spokesperson said.

They also said that Israel would not participate in building or running the Emirati compound. “When construction begins, that’s when the ISF participates with boots on the ground.”

The ISF, or International Stabilization Force, is a concept introduced by the Trump-brokered peace agreement. It envisions countries pledging troops to serve as a neutral security body responsible for overseeing public security in Gaza. Countries have yet to pledge forces.

A project timeline obtained by the Guardian indicates that site planning began with a “land deed” review in late October and will entail at least four to six months of preparations before construction begins.

A deed review was a top priority for planners, according to two people briefed on the process. If Palestinian landowners can prove deeded claims to the site, Gulf funders and other groups linked to “Gaza’s first planned community” could be accused of forcible displacement of a civilian population, which is a war crime.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, expressed skepticism that the Emirati-backed compound would ever be built, but said that, either way, the plans serve Israel’s political goals.

“Without one brick being laid, it gives a further layer of permission to Israel clearing the area, and displacing or killing Palestinians in the process,” Levy said.

The Emirates’ participation allows Israel to insist that construction is proceeding with the support of an Arab state, Levy added.

“It distracts from the fact that Israel occupies 58% of Gaza because this portion of Gaza they will attempt to label as ‘happy Gaza’, with schools and a judiciary and hospitals,” Levy said.

It’s not clear exactly how reconstruction efforts will proceed. United Nations programs that once serviced 80% of Gaza’s schools have been largely dismantled, following Israel’s allegations that UN staff participated in 7 October. And Israel has barred several longstanding aid groups from Gaza, including those that once staffed and supplied its hospitals or funded community water projects.

Private contractors have been courting White House officials in hopes of securing lucrative reconstruction bids since October, when Trump brokered the peace agreement. One group, led by a Republican insider, has claimed to have an “inside track” to reconstruction work, the Guardian reported in December.

Muhammad Shehada, a visiting Middle East fellow for the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that reconstruction planners at the CMCC seem to be operating under the assumption that Palestinians will leave the Hamas-controlled red zone and move into newly constructed communities “if you dump enough food there”.

He said that those tactics may not work and overlooked the politics of the area, which he said “did not interest” military planners.

To move into the Emirati compound, Palestinians living in the “red zone” will have to cross an Israeli checkpoint into the “green zone”. Next, they will be subjected to “security vetting” and “biometric documentation”. The plans do not specify who would complete the vetting or manage biometric data collection, nor do they articulate why someone would be turned away.

Palestinians approved for entry will use their Palestinian ID numbers, as issued by the Palestinian Authority in coordination with Israel’s COGAT, the Israeli agency charged with administration of Gaza, to join the community registry, planning documents say.

Matt Mahmoudi, an assistant professor at the University of Cambridge and researcher and adviser on AI and human rights at Amnesty International, reviewed planning documents for “Gaza’s first planned community” and raised concerns the plan would “expand biometric surveillance in Gaza”.

“Israel’s deployment of biometric surveillance reinforces apartheid and the oppression of Palestinians by perpetuating a coercive environment intended to force Palestinians out of areas of strategic interest to Israeli authorities,” Mahmoudi said.

Should Palestinians voluntarily subject themselves to the surveillance and biometric measures proposed for “Gaza’s first planned community”, Levy and others suggested that Israel would be happy to see this first “case study” succeed.

“As far as Israel is concerned, if Gaza ends up with four or so model Palestinian communities of say 25,000 each, all of them vetted, and everything else is a hellscape where you’re further encouraging the ethnic cleansing, or the physical removal of Palestinians from there, that’s a desirable outcome.”