“Project Sunrise” and the Kushner-Witkoff Gaza Grift

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Gaza has been a Rorschach Test for the Trump administration, onto which it projects its full range of delusional thinking about the Palestinians.  My last post portrayed one of their most recent fantasies, which they’ve called Alternative Safe Communities (aka concentration camps).  These would be enclosed camps of 25,000 Palestinians, who would be forbidden from leaving once they had entered (“you can check out any time you want but you can never leave“).  The camps were to be a sort of model village with their own public infrastructure: a Middle East version of the Seaside Florida setting of the Jim Carrey film, the Truman Show.  A planned city providing all the amenities for “comfortable living.”  But clearly not for Palestinians. Rather, this luxury resort is meant for the Israeli settlers who will replace them.

Now, the Wall Street Journal brings us an even more bizarre scheme, which the Witkoff-Kushner ‘dream machine’ calls Project Sunrise.  Tearing a page from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his 21st century desert city, Neom–they propose to transform Gaza into a “digitally driven smart city,”  a “gateway to prosperity.”

Kushner and Witkoff… developed a draft proposal to convert the bombed-out enclave into a gleaming metropolis. In 32 pages of PowerPoint slides, replete with images of coastal high-rises alongside charts and cost tables, the plan outlines steps to take Gaza residents from tents to penthouses and from poverty to prosperity.

If anyone’s going to prosper, it won’t be the inhabitants.  But it certainly will be the money men, the wheelers-and-dealers, the contractors and developers.  The proposal is full of tech buzzwords like “digital platforms,” “innovation hub,” “modern telecom solutions” and “enhanced connectivity.”  All of which mean precisely nothing to a Palestinian.

Babies are freezing to death, rivers of sewage course through what once were streets, floods inundate tents housing hundreds of thousands of families–and these clowns are dreaming of smart cities.  How divorced from reality can they be? An Israeli friend suggested it reminded him of Theresienstadt, the Czech concentration camp disguised for the benefit of Red Cross visits to resemble a model refugee camp, replete with gardens and its own orchestra.  Once the inspectors left, it returned to its real purpose as a way station to the death camps.

This story was certainly leaked by the Witkoff-Kushner team to their preferred media outlet, the Wall Street Journal. But even it, as slavish as it may be to the Trump narrative, has to offer a hint of skepticism:

Some U.S. officials who have reviewed the plan have serious doubts about how realistic it is. They are skeptical that Hamas will agree to disarm in the first place for the plan to take effect—and even then that the U.S. could convince wealthy nations to foot the bill for transforming a dangerous postwar environment into a high-tech cityscape.

To add yet more skepticism to this account, let’s review the funding mechanism for this misshapen mess of an undertaking:

The project…would cost a total of $112.1 billion over 10 years, though the U.S. would commit to being an “anchor” supporting nearly $60 billion in grants and guarantees on debt for “all the contemplated workstreams” in that time period. Gaza could then self-fund many projects over the following years of the plan, the proposal projects, and eventually pay down its debt as improvements fuel local industry and the broader economy.

Note the language here. The US will not necessarily be a donor. It will be an anchor, which has no clear meaning or definition.  Where will that $60-billion come from?  Undoubtedly from the Gulf petro-states which Trump and Kushner see as their deep pockets for every hare-brained scheme they devise.  Where would the remaining $60-billion come from? From Gaza itself–by selling it off piece by piece to real estate developers:

The proposal calls for monetizing 70% of Gaza’s coastline beginning in year 10, and estimates the glitzy riviera could lead to over $55 billion in long-run investment returns.

If this were any other country on earth, the monsters who destroyed this place would be forced to pay reparations for their crimes.  They would have to pay for reconstruction. But Israel?  They get away with murder (literally). They accept no responsibility. “Let everyone else pay.”  No one forces Israel to.  Once you let them off, you’ll never break the precedent. Israel would howl with outrage over the prospect of paying for its sins.

Why would anyone believe Project Sunrise has the most remote chance of happening? Beyond being preposterous, it’s obscene considering the level of suffering Israel and the US has inflicted on the people who actually live and die here each day.

When you’re speaking of a $100-billion plus project surely you’d put months of effort, negotiation, financial planning, logistical consulting. Otherwise, how would you expect this to work, right?  Not so:

White House aide Josh Gruenbaum and other U.S. officials pulled the proposal together over the past 45 days, officials said, adding they received input from Israeli officials, people in the private sector and contractors.

Note who provided no input to this plan: the people it purports to benefit, Palestinians.  Who did provide input?  The very Israelis who destroyed the place to begin with. Plus the contractors salivating over the billions they expect to rake in from reconstruction.

Once you get over the outrage over this steaming mess of a grift, you have to stand back and admire its sheer bombast and grandiosity.  This is the Trump “magic.”  Think big. Think outrageous. Think gold. Think $300-million ballrooms.  Dare the rest of the world to stand in your way.  Threaten them if they make a peep.  When you’ve stared them down, go to work and start raking in the billions.

It has to be clear to just about anyone that this is a cracked scheme that will never happen for a thousand different reasons. In that case, why are the guys wasting their time devising and hawking it?  Because they have bigger fish to fry.  The Gulf is Kushner’s pot of gold.  The regional sovereign wealthy funds are his personal piggy bank.  Project Sunrise is a bona fide for him with his financiers.  He establishes their trust by touting this plan as a mark of his commitment to their interests: stick with me and watch the billions pour in.

Trump and Kushner also are looking to the Abraham Accords and the prospect of expanding it to include Saudi Arabia, which has refused to join until the war ends.  They can go to MBS and show him this plan for the “day after.” They’re committed, they undoubtedly argue, to the war’s end and this plan shows it: now, MBS, sign on the dotted line.

The crowning achievement of the Accords would be normalization of relations between Israel and the rest of the Arab states: its full acceptance in the region. A goal long-sought by Israeli and US leaders.  One which has been beyond reach since the founding of the State.  Now it seems within grasp. The Holy Grail of Middle East diplomacy.

Project Sunrise is a “surefire” proposition for Trump, Kushner, et al. Even if it never materializes, it will set the president up to reap billions from grateful Middle Eastern potentates.  If it brings Saudi Arabia into the fold of the Abraham Accords and normalizes Israeli relations with the Arab world, it would be a crowning achievement for his presidency.  Not to mention the real estate opportunities it will create.