For Egypt, Trump's Project Sunrise is as bad an idea as Gaza Riviera

The latest US proposal for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip does not impress the Egyptians. Rather, it has triggered pushback and accusations that this proposal aims to bury another plan by Egypt related to the reconstruction of the war-devastated Palestinian territory.

The new proposal, reportedly developed over the past 45 days by a team led by US President Donald Trump's senior advisors, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, aims to transform Gaza into a "high-tech, luxurious" coastal city.

Called "Project Sunrise", the plan was reportedly pitched to potential donor countries, including oil-rich Gulf nations, and will cost $112 billion to implement over two decades.

The US is expected to anchor the plan by providing $60 billion, while hopes are pinned on Gaza itself to supply the remaining funds as the plan moves ahead.

Those to which the plan has been pitched have reportedly included Egypt, which has not officially commented on it so far.

Analysts argue that Cairo will likely walk a very fine line between rejecting the new plan and pushing forward its own blueprint for Gaza's reconstruction.

"Egypt will only approve reconstruction plans that safeguard the rights of the people of Gaza and don't slice any territories away from this Palestinian territory," Egyptian political researcher Ahmed Abdel Meguid said to The New Arab.

Similar to many analysts, Meguid expects Cairo to balance between rejecting the plan and ensuring it does not lose support from President Trump for the ceasefire and the prospect of a final settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

'Gaza Riviera' with a new face?

Many in Egypt view this latest proposal as merely a revival of another plan unveiled earlier this year, when the US president declared ambitions to rebuild Gaza into a "Middle East Riviera".

At the time, the US president's plan received outright rejection from Cairo, which viewed it as an "act of injustice" to the people of Gaza, being founded on the premise of depopulating their territory.

Analysts in Cairo argue that the new proposal is practically the same as the Trump "Riviera" plan, especially in presupposing that Gaza belongs to nobody and is up for grabs by real estate investors. Most notably, the proposal overlooks the real needs of Gaza's people, who, after two years of unrelenting Israeli attacks, want their basic needs to be met immediately.

"The people of Gaza don't need either skyscrapers or smart cities two years after the war on their territory," remarked Ahmed Youssef, a professor of political science at Cairo University.

The priority, he added, has to be given to protecting the people of Gaza against ceasefire violations, including repeated Israeli attacks that are still killing Palestinians.

"The people of Gaza live in very dire conditions," Youssef told TNA. "They need rescue through a real ceasefire and the provision of the things that can keep them living, including humanitarian aid."

He and like-minded analysts view the proposal as too decorative to match the bitter realities on the ground in Gaza.

After two years of Israel's genocide war, which killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, Gaza is nothing but ruins.

President Trump himself described it repeatedly as a "demolition site", probably quoting Witkoff, who visited the territory more than once in the past months.

The smell of death can be felt everywhere in the besieged coastal enclave. Palestinian residents are struggling to survive from Israeli attacks and a lack of food security, while also braving the biting cold of winter in the open.  

Moreover, adding further fuel to Egypt's growing concern, are recent vows by Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz never to leave Gaza by building illegal settlements. 

Instead of addressing these realities, Kushner's and Witkoff's proposal aspires to turn Gaza into a dreamlike piece of real estate.

It aims to build luxury penthouse residences in some parts of Gaza and, among other things, introduce high-tech rail transport, according to available information about the plan.

Gaza's 40-kilometre Mediterranean coastline is apparently the centrepiece of the plan, which aims to monetise 70% of it ten years after its implementation begins.

It also hopes that the Strip would generate $55 billion in long-run investment returns.

Nonetheless, the question lingering on the tip of the tongues of Egyptian analysts: who will this opulent development be made for?

"All US plans for Gaza to date appear to harbour ulterior motives that don't prioritise or even serve the true interests of the Palestinian people there," Palestinian political analyst Tayseer al-Khatib told TNA.

"They aim to depopulate parts of Gaza only to use these parts in the implementation of swanky real estate projects for other people," he added.

Displacement never left the table

The new proposal for Gaza's reconstruction faces a series of hurdles on the road to implementation, including the prerequisite for Hamas to disarm fully.

The estimated implementation period of the plan (20 years) is too long for those drafting it to be around to oversee or ensure its execution.

The plan does not specify where Gaza's population of around two million, now living on less than 50% of the space of their territory, will stay until the coastal enclave is rebuilt.

It also concentrates reconstruction efforts in the southern part of Gaza, near the Egyptian border, at least in its initial phases.

This prompts wariness in Cairo, where there is concern that Gaza's population is being intentionally pushed towards the Egyptian border and into the Sinai Peninsula.

Cairo is afraid that the forcible transfer of the people of Gaza will turn Sinai into a new battleground between Palestinian factions and Israel, in turn heralding the collapse of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli treaty.

Egypt also believes that Gaza's depopulation would be a finishing stroke for the Palestinian issue as a whole, given Israel's restless bid to annex the occupied West Bank.

Egypt's $53 billion reconstruction plan for Gaza, declared and endorsed by Arab and Islamic nations in March, aims to stop any displacement by ensuring that Gaza is reconstructed over five years while its population is in place, analysts argue.

"The Egyptian reconstruction plan is explicitly designed to ensure that the people of Gaza are not displaced from their land during the rebuilding process," Abdel Meguid, the political researcher, said.

"This is the only reliable safeguard against the permanent loss of their territory, which must remain an integral part of any future Palestinian state," he added.