The recent proposal by the US president regarding Gaza has revived the discussion on the future of this territory. At the heart of this proposal lies an oft-overlooked fact: Gaza is not inherently doomed to fail. Its problems are not geographical, economic, or even logistical in nature—they are entirely political.
The Gazans, and their sympathizers, have couched Gaza in terms of a hapless victim of circumstance for decades. Reality starkly differs. This is not a barren, landlocked, resource-poor territory plagued by insurmountable natural hardships. Quite to the contrary, Gaza is a prime piece of real estate-it is a coastal strip, abutting the Mediterranean, with the fertile sands from the Egyptian Delta, proximal to ancient trade routes. With energy reserves and the potential for infrastructure development, Gaza could be a hub of trade, tourism, and industry. In another world—one in which its leadership chose progress over war—it could even be a critical transit corridor, offering an alternative to the Suez Canal.
The only problem Gaza has is the politics of destruction.
A culture of destruction, not construction
Since Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the leadership there-first the Palestinian Authority and then Hamas-had every opportunity to create something new. Instead, their leaders used international aid not for building infrastructure, industry, or any other project that would help better the lives of its residents but rather to turn Gaza into a military fortress embedded with terror tunnels and missile launch sites against Israel. Every building, every road, every civilian institution was seen not as part of a future state in which one could live, work, and study-but as potential cover for Hamas's ongoing war against the Jewish state.
That is to say not that Gaza couldn't succeed-only it wouldn't try. Billions of dollars cascaded into this place from contributors such as the US, European Union, Qatar. Instead of being invested in constructing an economic base for the people of Gaza, much of it was diverted to armaments and terror infrastructure. Meanwhile, organizations like UNRWA maintained a system of perpetual Palestinian refugeehood, reinforcing the belief that Gaza is not a home, but merely a launching pad for reconquering "Palestine from the River to the Sea."
Trump's plan acknowledges a fact that should have been axiomatic decades ago: Gaza is something valuable. It has value to the Palestinians, to regional actors like Egypt and Jordan, and to the broader Middle East as a whole. The question is how to turn its politics from destruction to construction.
Breaking the cycle of refugeehood and "return"
If Gaza is to have a future, it has to start with a change of mind. The Palestinian notion of "return"—the idea that generations of Palestinians, including those born in Gaza, are refugees awaiting their rightful home in Israel—needs to be brought to a close. That ideological obsession underpinned the October 7 attacks and has sustained a culture of destruction, ensuring that Gaza would remain an arena for war rather than a place for life.
One such solution is converting the refugees in Gaza into owners. Rather than continue to propagate the fantasy of Palestinian displacement, international efforts should be geared toward endowing every resident of Gaza with a concrete, acknowledged right to property-a stake in the future of the territory. Be it in apartments or economic assets, this would transform Gaza into home, rather than a temporary base from which to conquer. Concretely, this would involve:
Dismantling of UNRWA's refugee status to all Gazans. Nobody born in Gaza and raised within it should have the status of "refugee" from some other land.
Replacing the refugee status with property rights. Instead of clinging to the illusory dream of a "right of return" to the Israeli cities that long ago ceased to be theirs, the Gazans should get legally recognized property claims within Gaza itself.
Thus ending the external manipulation of Palestinian identity. The Arab states, the United Nations, and the Western donors need to stop colluding in that perpetual victimhood which has maintained Gaza in suspended animation.
And who for Gaza?
The next pivotal question, however, is: Who is going to manage this transition? The Arab world has a long history of rebuffing US-backed economic initiatives aimed at stabilizing the region. Since the 1950s, every grand American effort to develop Palestinian self-sufficiency has been hijacked by Arab states that preferred to use the Palestinian cause as a political weapon rather than solve the issue.
Trump's offer to temporarily take over Gaza indicates an appreciation of this history. The US may be signaling that this time around, the Western money would not flow in without a mechanism to prevent misappropriation of the same.
However, the Arab world could also start seeing the untapped potential of Gaza. Jordan could seize this as an opportunity to establish a strategic foothold on the Mediterranean. Granting Gazans temporary or permanent asylum could give Amman an opportunity to set the groundwork for taking over the territory and incorporating it into a greater economic perspective. Jordan, in turn, could give the West Bank's Palestinian population-which it had stripped of nationality decades ago-its citizenship in exchange for transportation routes that connect Gaza with the Red Sea.
Of course, all this is sure to scare the daylights out of Jordan's expansionist moves. The thing is that historically, Cairo has resisted any kind of assumption for responsibility towards Gaza, opting to have this place as its buffer zone-even while making certain Hamas would never become a serious disruptor to Egyptian stability. Now, with Jordan going first, Egypt is certain to have little choice but to counter an offer of an Egyptian economic and political arrangement.
A turning point for Gaza and the region
Trump's peace proposal has made the world look at Gaza not as a liability but as an opportunity. Whoever manages to break its cycle of devastation and redirect it toward prosperity will achieve his own strategic interests, as well as change the entire region.
Israel has long been aware of the potential of Gaza. Now, for the first time, even the US appears to be becoming aware of its potential. But whether this latest proposal will produce real change, or simply become the latest entry on the roll call of past failures, will depend on whether the world has finally reached a point where it can see that the key to Gaza's future is the demise of its corrosive politics—and the birth of a new vision based on building, stability, and prosperity.