Egypt Rejects Trump’s Plan to Empty Gaza

Egypt has announced the development of a comprehensive vision for the reconstruction of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, one that guarantees Palestinians the right to remain on their land. This declaration comes as a direct rebuttal to a controversial proposal from U.S. President Donald Trump, who recently suggested that two million Palestinians in Gaza be permanently relocated to Jordan, Egypt, and other nations. Egypt’s firm stance sets the stage for a diplomatic clash between American ambitions and Arab principles.

The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized the need for a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian issue, grounded in international law and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. While Egypt remains open to dialogue with the U.S., it made clear that any approach based on forced displacement is unacceptable. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is reportedly working on an alternative reconstruction plan, supported by other Arab nations, that prioritizes dignity and sovereignty.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II has also condemned Trump’s plan, stating unequivocally that all Arab nations reject the idea of displacing Palestinians. He reiterated that the only viable path forward is the rebuilding of Gaza in a manner that respects Palestinian identity and ownership. He warned that any forced resettlement would only inflame tensions and sow instability in the region for years to come.

The United Nations has weighed in, warning that any attempt to forcibly relocate Gaza’s population would be illegal under international law and “tantamount to ethnic cleansing.” The Geneva Conventions prohibit the forced transfer of civilian populations in conflict zones. Experts argue that Trump’s proposal risks violating these statutes and undermines the global legal order.

In response to the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza, Arab states have introduced a bold reconstruction proposal worth $53 billion. This plan includes rebuilding critical infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, power plants, and housing, while also investing in job creation and economic revitalization. Central to the plan is ensuring that Palestinians remain on their land and play a leading role in shaping Gaza’s future.

The contrast between the Arab vision and Trump’s "Riviera" dream for Gaza is stark. While the Arab proposal aims to restore dignity and stability, Trump’s plan envisions luxury hotels, ports, and investment zones—absent the very people who call Gaza home. Critics have likened it to a real estate project masked as diplomacy, with little regard for the human cost.

International legal scholars have slammed the Trump proposal, saying there is no legal precedent for forcibly depopulating a territory for redevelopment. Such measures, especially when they disproportionately target a specific ethnic group, fit the textbook definition of ethnic cleansing and violate basic human rights principles.

Human rights organizations and legal bodies around the world are calling for investigations into potential war crimes committed during the recent military campaign in Gaza. The destruction of civilian infrastructure and deliberate targeting of densely populated areas have raised serious concerns, prompting calls for accountability and justice.

Gaza’s humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Food, water, and medical supplies are scarce. Reports of widespread hunger and malnutrition are increasing. But amid the devastation, hope flickers. The united front of Arab nations and civil society groups offers a lifeline to Gaza’s besieged population.

Egypt, with its strategic position and historical role in the Palestinian cause, is seen as a key player in any peace effort. Its rejection of Trump’s plan underscores a growing determination in the Arab world to chart a path forward based on justice, not expediency. This stance is seen not just as a defense of Gaza but as a defense of Arab dignity.

Reconstruction, if guided by the Arab plan, would not only rebuild homes and schools but restore the social and cultural fabric of Gaza. It would provide jobs, strengthen local industries, and give young Palestinians a reason to hope again. It would be a declaration that Gaza belongs to its people—not foreign powers or investors.

In contrast, Trump’s plan continues to face mounting opposition. Protests have erupted across the Arab world and even within the United States, where faith groups, academics, and human rights activists have condemned the policy as inhumane and imperialist. “Gaza is not for sale,” read a protest banner in downtown Washington.

Palestinians now find themselves at a critical juncture. On one side is the threat of permanent displacement; on the other, a chance at recovery led by allies who still believe in their cause. The world must decide where it stands—alongside justice and self-determination or with those who would erase an entire people for political and economic gain.

Gaza is not just a strip of land. It is a living community with history, memory, and resistance. Any reconstruction effort that ignores this reality is doomed to fail. The future of Gaza must be written by Palestinians, not dictated from Washington boardrooms.

Egypt’s bold rejection of Trump’s plan is a reminder that principles still matter in diplomacy. It is also a call to action for the international community to support a reconstruction model that honors human dignity and the right of return.

The road ahead will not be easy. But if the Arab world stands firm and the global community listens, Gaza can rise again—not as a resort devoid of its people, but as a homeland rebuilt with pride and resilience.

History will judge this moment. It will remember who stood for justice and who stood for profit. And it will remember that the future of Gaza must belong to those who never left it.

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A new West Bank city built by a Palestinian for Palestinians

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently announced the U.S. no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank in violation of international law. The surprise decision reversed four decades of American policy. It drew criticism from allies around the world and alarm from Palestinians about the prospects for peace. To get a firsthand look at the politics of peace, we went to the West Bank, an area about the size of Delaware along the Jordan River, where Palestinians have long hoped to establish a state. (more)

In the city of Ramallah, we found a businessman who isn't waiting for the Palestinian Authority and the Israelis to hammer out a path forward. He's trying to build one himself. Bashar Masri is the dreamer behind a brand new city on a hill called Rawabi. Everyone told him it was impossible but today it's the biggest construction project in modern Palestinian history and the first planned city for Palestinians in more than 1,000 years.

US firm wins Palestinian City project

US management consulting firm decision/analysis partners said it has been selected to design telecom infrastructure for Rawabi, the first Palestinian planned city in the West Bank.

Decision/analysis partners, an independent management consultancy based in Northern Virginia serving governments, the private sector, and multi-lateral organizations worldwide, said the contract was awarded by Bayti Real Estate Investment Company.

Rawabi is an US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA)-funded project aimed at supporting private sector development of 250-acre residential and commercial City in the West Bank.

The Virginia-based company said as per the contract, it will develop a technical design and roadmap for the deployment of its information and communications technologies (ICT) infrastructure.

Under this project, decision/analysis partners and its subcontractors will provide an assessment and forecast of needs and requirements; technical design and architecture; economic and financial analysis of options; analysis of business model alternatives; development of detailed requirements; legal and regulatory assessment; structuring of procurement activities and a preliminary environmental impact.

The study is funded by a $412,900 grant from the USTDA. The project will be led by Dr Raymond E. Barber, director of decision/analysis partners' ICT practice.

Dr Barber has successfully led similar USTDA-funded efforts in Mauritius, Indonesia, Guatemala and Romania. The study team includes a team of experts from decision/analysis partners and key staff from Polar Star Consulting of Fairfax, Virginia and CCG Facilities Integration of Baltimore, MD.

"Rawabi's ICT infrastructure is a critical factor in building its knowledge base economy," said Amir Dajani, deputy managing director of Bayti Real Estate Investment Company.

"Providing Rawabi with an advanced ICT environment will have ripple effects throughout Palestine, expanding economic activities, creating jobs, introducing new technologies in building and trade, and engaging more broadly with the global economy," he added.

Decision/analysis partners specializes in operations management, market analysis, procurement and business and technology planning for Information and Communications Technologies, the Mailing and Postal sectors, and Logistics and Supply Chain Management.

Palestine creates special engineering committee to support a pilot project of mud-brick housing movement

Palestine government supporting the mud-brick housing movement and has pledged money and assembled a special engineering committee to investigate a pilot project that will test a multistory school to determine just how safe and plausible building more widespread with mud brick can be.

Of course, all of this has spawned a new temporary economy in tunnel mud removal and brick manufacturing, and the engineering itself is quite antiquated but none the more outdated.

They’re using combinations of mud, sand, salt, and straw, and in some cases rubble to forge bricks and build basic homes. Some have already been said to have withstood elements of winter rains and harsh summer sun....

It’s almost as if the tunnels had been turned inside out, sort of poetically unraveled overland as a result of the Israeli assaults, and now offer the dual benefit of both relief housing while also keeping the essential corridors of underground commerce alive. In some ways it’s just good old-fashioned poetic justice bound with some gritty irony.

Emad Al Khaledi, an engineer from Gaza, who invent the mud brick construction in Palestine

In an attempt to overcome the Israeli restrictions, Emad Al Khaledi, an engineer from Gaza and owner of an idle cementbrick factory, thought about using earth resources two years ago.

"I thought of finding an alternative to cement when the Israeli blockade tightened," he said. "I tested many natural materials and finally came up with this product."

The product is a solid block, ready for construction. It is a mixture of sand, clay, calcium and water that are compressed together in one manual machine.

"After the war, the idea needed to be implemented on the ground," he proudly said. "We started to produce the bricks after the material was successfully tested."

The materials and the blocks were tested in laboratories of the Islamic University and the Engineers' Syndicate and they proved high quality within the international standards, he said.

The manual machine produces 15,000 blocks each day, he said, adding that he is working on manufacturing an automatic machine which will produce 50,000 blocks every day.

Al Khaledi, an experienced engineer by profession and mud enthusiast by choice, said his initiative progressed in high speed, especially after the war on Gaza, as thousands of people were left homeless and had to live in tents and other makeshift shelters.

"We tried to build a house and the project was a success," said Al Khaledi, referring to al-Athamna's house. "The UNRWA asked us to produce bricks to build houses for displaced people after they saw how successful our work was."

Construction begins on Rawabi, the first Palestinian planned city

Construction has commenced on Rawabi,the first Palestinian planned city, following the Palestinian Ministry of Local Government's approval of the city's Masterplan in December. The developer, Bayti Real Estate Investment Company, initiated excavation work at the site after receiving the go-ahead from the Palestinian Authority.

Earlier this week, bulldozers and heavy equipment began working on the primary construction phase of residential areas and the business district, in accordance with the new city's Masterplan.

The presence of engineers, workers and bulldozers on-site prompted excitement and support among the citizens of neighboring villages, who have eagerly anticipated this vital development since the project was announced during the last Palestine Investment Conference in Bethlehem.

Mr. Wael Bawatneh, head of the Ajjoul Local Village Council - an adjacent village which borders Rawabi - stated that this development will create thousands of much-needed new job opportunities for local citizens. Parts of Ajjoul will ultimately be incorporated into the new Rawabi municipality, and current Ajjoul residents look forward to the advantages that such close proximity to Rawabi will provide.

Bayti has tapped a range of local expertise in the hope of catalyzing growth in the Palestinian private sector, awarding several major construction contracts to local Palestinian companies. Among these, Bayti signed a contract with a consortium of general contractors including Shaltaf, Al Fursan Al Thalatha, and Al Mumayaza.

Commenting on the launch, Ghanem Bin Saad Al Saad, CEO of Qatari Diar, the main partner financing the project, reaffirmed his company's commitment to Rawabi's success and reiterated strong confidence in the project's ability to contribute to meaningful growth of the Palestinian economy. Al Saad stated that Rawabi, as a national undertaking, will create thousands of new jobs capitalizing on local expertise, skilled labor, and Palestinian products. As importantly, the project will provide new opportunities for the Palestinian people to own homes at affordable prices.

Bashar Masri, Managing Director of Bayti, acknowledged that the rapid mobilization of the construction phase would not have materialized had it not been for the extensive support of the Qatari partners and the Palestinian Authority's involvement and desire to stimulate the Palestinian economy. He pointed out that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, together with Prime Minister Dr. Salam Fayyad, are keen on overcoming the challenges and obstacles that impede forward progress on the project. Masri further added that to his distinct dismay, to date, Rawabi has not yet obtained any of the requested approvals from the Israeli government, although verbal assurances were given that approval will be forthcoming. Masri stressed that despite these challenges, the city of Rawabi will still come to fruition.

Property boom taking shape in Ramallah

With property prices tumbling from New York to Dubai, it’s interesting to know there is at least one place where property is actually rising in value. Pack your bags for Ramallah, the emerging city-state of Palestine.

So effective has Israel been at garroting the West Bank economy that working-age Palestinians are emigrating to Ramallah from places like Jericho, Nablus, Bethlehem and Jenin to look for jobs. Property prices are rising accordingly in a region already plagued by rising inflation, unemployment and a Palestinian Authority (PA) that has been rendered by occupation and its own incompetence as unfit to govern. Together with a contracting economy, the Palestinians can now add withering stagflation to their lot.

Of course, no one following the US presidential campaign would have the slightest clue about the deteriorating situation in Palestine. If candidates John McCain and Barack Obama agree on anything, it is to avoid any reference to Israeli-Palestinian affairs beyond Pavlovian declarations of fealty to the Jewish state. And even if they did, they would probably cite a September study from the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs that reports the Palestinian economy actually improved during the first half of this year.

According to the report – which identifies the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” and doesn’t even bother with Hamas-controlled Gaza – employment, wages, tourism and the number of work permits issued by the Israeli government to Palestinian labourers are all up, while the Israeli Defence Force has removed a hundred road blocks. Even the PA is talking up the economy, citing last May’s business conference in Bethlehem, which attracted 1,500 investors.

But while you can lead a horse to water – assuming you can get the required travel permits and negotiate the thicket of checkpoints and barriers surrounding it – you can’t make it drink. Sam Bahour, a business consultant and West Bank resident who has done graduate work on Israeli-Palestinian economic relations, says the economy is as bad as ever. “As politicians talk peace, people on the ground are seeing the same old thing, particularly with the settler movement,” he says from Ramallah by phone. “The Israeli government is allowing more settler violence and the Palestinian Authority has been reduced to the role of a postman, delivering permit requests from occupied to occupier, whether for travel, building, or exporting and importing.”

While the PA is heralding a second investor conference scheduled for Nov 22 in Nablus, it is unlikely to generate anything more substantial than the Bethlehem confab, which yielded little in the way of new projects. There are good reasons for this, and they are quantified in an understated but devastating World Bank report issued last week.

In the parts of the West Bank controlled by Israel – known as “Area C” – “recurrent destruction of trees, private homes and public infrastructure, as well as settlers’ encroachments on private land create a permanent state of insecurity that deters investment”, according to the report.

Outside Area C – beyond those Palestinian-controlled towns and cities quarantined by Israel’s security wall – residents are beholden to their occupiers for building permits that are “rare and difficult to obtain, with only a handful approved annually for the past several years”. Meanwhile, the report goes on, “unlicensed construction continues due to the needs of an expanding population, despite a demolition rate that far exceeds building approvals by the Israeli authorities”. As a result, land is becoming prohibitively expensive, even as residential development crowds out other economic activities on what little land is available.

Unlike the Israeli government report, which includes no macroeconomic data, the World Bank lays out the sobering truth: since 2000, Palestinian GDP and per capita GDP have contracted respectively by 14 per cent and 40 per cent, and poverty is on the rise. The report’s summary recommendation is equally stark. As long as Palestinians are bottled up like worker ants in colonies of urban areas, “the investment climate will remain unfavourable and business opportunities much below potential”.

The Israeli study is also contradicted by the most recent biweekly UN report on traffic flows through the choke points of Gaza and the West Bank, which cites a levelling out in the number of barriers to movement in the West Bank, but no measurable reduction. Since the Agreement on Movement and Access was signed between the two sides almost exactly three years ago, the report notes, the number of Israeli-imposed obstacles to mobility in the West Bank has increased by 62 per cent.

While politicians and bureaucrats worldwide lament the global financial crisis, it is worth noting that the Palestinians have for decades endured conditions that would make anyone old enough to remember the Great Depression nostalgic for it.

Jordan & Palestine Financial Investment Company

Jordan & Palestine Financial Investment Company was established on February 2, 1996 by the Housing Bank for Trade & Finance, with capital of $3 million in Ramallah, Palestine. JOPFICO is a member of the Palestine Securities Exchange (PSE) and a member of the United Arab Bourse.

Jordan & Palestine Financial Investment Co. is interested in:

* Financial investments in Palestine
* Portfolio management
* Brokerage at Palestine Securities Exchange (PSE)
* Financial consulting
* Underwriting