As this article is being penned, US President Donald Trump and his team are stating and restating that the US is principally committed to the rehabilitation and redevelopment of the Gaza Strip for an interim period under American administration and supervision, a significant milestone towards peace in the Middle East. This plan shall bring an indefinite end to the war, the release of all the hostages, complete eradication of what’s left of Hamas and a new era for Gazans and their neighbors.
For over a year now, the Institute for Structural Reforms has been repeatedly and consistently calling for the implementation of a plan along the same lines. Our plan outlines the establishment of a joint task force to take control and possession of Gaza, thus establishing an interim government as an alternative to Hamas, in cooperation with "Abrahamic" Arab countries like Saudi Arabia. In line with Trump’s recent suggestion that “China could help” in ending global wars, we have argued that China should partner with the US on this task force.
Breaking the aid cycle
In our book, Liberating Gaza: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty, Fundamentalism and Terror, we have stressed that reliance on philanthropy for rehabilitation must not continue, given where this approach has led Gaza so far.
Here lies an opportunity for Trump’s business acumen to shine: Gaza has natural resources and geographic potentials that can bolster its rehabilitation through business investments in a dozen income-generating development projects, such as exploiting Gaza’s offshore natural gas, building a seaport and reconstructing the almost completely damaged housing sector. The task force should secure the necessary investments and gain the support of most Gazans by guaranteeing them a future of proper housing and employment, with official securities provided by banks and firms.
Concurrently, the task force should cut Hamas’s lifelines of finance, communications and movement. Of course, there must be an insistence on complete eradication of terrorist organizations in the Strip and creation of a security buffer zone. Alongside this plan, we have presented another plan for the rehabilitation and redevelopment of the bordering Israeli Western Negev, which was also devastated by the war. Our hope is that one day, only a blooming boulevard shall separate Gaza and the Western Negev.
For more than two decades, Palestinians in Gaza couldn’t leave the Strip unless they were willing to pay significant amounts and get smuggled out. Trump’s proposal of assisted immigration for the sake of reconstruction, renewal, redevelopment and rehabilitation is essentially an opening of the gates for hundreds of thousands of Gazans who want nothing more than to escape poverty (even before October 7th, Gaza was one of the two poorest areas in the world) and start a new life. Trump and Netanyahu made it clear that they are not interested in occupation nor cleansing; that American soldiers are not needed for this operation; and that Palestinians can come back to their land once reconstruction is completed.
Serving as the chairman of the National Task Force for Urban Renewal and introducing related legislation in Israel under Prime Minister Netanyahu have taught me a lesson or two about housing reconstruction; coordination between evacuation and construction is essential for any such endeavor. However, safeguarding the property rights of landowners (which are highly regarded by the Republicans) is a must. About half of Gaza’s land is privately owned.
Land ownership of Gazans should be secured under Trump’s proposal, and owners should be maximally rewarded for any urban renewal projects on their land as Trump turns Gaza into a “Riviera”.
In the tumultuous arena of international politics, the power of business-oriented solutions often gets overlooked. Yet, as history reveals, the deal-making prowess of leaders like former US president Ronald Reagan has brought many conflicts to a peaceful resolution. Perhaps most famously, Reagan's series of summits with Gorbachev helped draw down the Cold War, illustrating how a give-and-take bilateralism, mediated through direct high-level communication, can bridge even the most formidable ideological divides and advance stability on a global scale. In order to reach agreements with his Soviet counterpart, Reagan utilized economic sanctions and embargoes as strategic tools of communication to influence the Soviets towards negotiation rather than confrontation. These sanctions never developed into a full-scale economic war, but rather resulted in disarmament agreements that economically benefited both superpowers as they enabled cuts in military expenditure.
Reagan's diplomatic style remains pertinent in an era marked by rapid scientific and technological shifts. In 1984, virologist Robert Gallo isolated the virus behind AIDS, only to find that Luc Montagnier of France's Pasteur Institute had discovered it a year earlier, leading to accusations of plagiarism and a lucrative patent war over the HIV test. The dispute was resolved in 1987 when Reagan and French Prime Minister Chirac agreed to share the patent's credit and royalties equally.
Recently, the tech world experienced an "A.I. Sputnik moment" when China unveiled DeepSeek, an AI model whose presumed efficiency caused American competitors' stocks to plummet. Despite accusations from OpenAI of copycatting, Trump praised DeepSeek as a "positive development," promoting competition without a "winner-takes-all" approach. He reiterated this stance by resisting a TikTok ban in the U.S., opting instead for a political resolution and proposing an American sovereign wealth fund to potentially invest in TikTok.
The mutual arm twisting between the US and China is not the beginning of a war but rather an overture for a “big, beautiful deal,” to cite a recent article in the Economist, arguing that “bundling economic trade-offs with a divvying-up of the world into spheres of influence” could serve as a basis for a deal acceptable by Trump and China’s Xi Jinping. As both superpowers are looking to stabilize the Middle East, they are now faced with a rare opportunity to cash their potential to cooperate. Trump should follow Reagan's playbook and convene a summit with Xi to solve the problem of Gaza.
Research recently published in the Economist showed that roughly half of the ceasefires in the last 30 years have ended successfully (e.g., with a formal peace agreement). The researchers noted that successful ceasefires have few things in common, among them the presence of a “monitoring system”. In the case of Gaza, there could be no better monitoring system than the presence of the two leading superpowers. Such monitoring, combined with true, business-oriented rehabilitation, is the only way to ensure the release of all the hostages and the eradication of Hamas with local popular support.
The legacies of leaders like Reagan have much to teach about solving today's crises—not through the might of arms, but through the promise of prosperity. A summit between Trump and Xi for the sake of Gaza could be another chapter in that illustrious tradition, making deals that are true wins for all parties involved.
Adv. Shraga Biran is the founder of the Institute for Structural Reforms.