As the military operation to occupy Gaza City continues, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich finally throws off the mask: at the end of the war the Gaza Strip will be “a real estate goldmine ”, he enthusiastically declares at the real estate conference Urban Renewal Summit in Tel Aviv. While the European Commission announces possible sanctions against Israel (with Smotrich's name appearing among those included in the package) and the Independent Commission of the United Nations accuses Tel Aviv of genocide , the far-right minister even speaks of “ negotiations started with the Americans ” on how to divide the Strip at the end of the conflict.
As if he were talking about any real estate transaction, Smotrich emphasizes that"we've already done the demolition, the first phase of the city's renewal. Now we just have to build." A phase, he forgets to mention, that has caused over 65,000 deaths to date, many of them children. The Finance Minister is also keen to clarify the purely economic aspects of the project: in the Palestinian enclave there is such an"abundance of real estate" that the reconstruction " will pay for itself," he insists.
For Netanyahu's minister, the"Eldorado Gaza" project has already been shared with the United States :"We have invested a lot of money in this war. We need to see how we will distribute the land in percentage", he added, underlining that"the business plan" for Gaza is on the desk of American President Donald Trump who"is verifying how this situation will become a real estate godsend". Moreover, last February it was the US president himself who launched the plan for the"Gaza Riviera" without Palestinians.
Smotrich and the Israeli government's plan doesn't stop at the Strip. It was he who announced in August the green light for the construction of 3,400 new settlements in the West Bank, the highly contested Colony E1, which—as he himself emphasized—"erases the illusion of two states and consolidates the Jewish people's hold on the heart of the Land of Israel." "The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans, but with facts," he reiterated, presenting the new settlements as"another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea." From the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, therefore, Smotrich and the Israeli government's plan is moving toward a single goal.
