The Current - From politics to logistics, what will it take to rebuild Gaza?

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Israel’s bombardment has left much of Gaza in rubble, and now President Donald Trump is proposing the U.S. should take over the enclave — with no right of return for Palestinians. We discuss what it will take to rebuild Gaza, from fraught politics to the sheer logistics of contending with so much destruction. 

When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. There's a man living in this address in the name of a deceased. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers are finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncovered, available now.

This is a CBC podcast. Hello, it's Matt here. Thanks for listening to The Current wherever you're getting this podcast. Before we get to today's show, wonder if I might ask a favor of you if you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using. There is a lot of news that's out there these days. We're trying to help you make sense of it all and give you a bit of a break from some

of that news too. So if you already follow the program, thank you. And if you have done that, maybe you could leave us a rating or review as well. The whole point of this is to let more listeners find our show and perhaps find some of that information that's so important in these really tricky times. So thanks for all of that, appreciate it, and onto today's show. Since the Israel Hamas war began 16 months ago,

the bombardment of Gaza has left much of the strip in rubble. Now, weeks into the ceasefire agreement, discussions on how to rebuild the territory have begun. US President Donald Trump has repeated several times his vision for Gaza's future. We'll build safe communities a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is. In the meantime, I would own this.

Think of it as a real estate development for the future. Trump was also asked on Fox News if Palestinians would have a right to return to Gaza. No, they wouldn't because they're going to have much better housing, much better. In other words, I'm talking about building a permanent place for them because if they have to return now, it'll be years before you could ever, it's not habitable. Many US allies and Palestinian officials have condemned this plan. The reality though is that the territory is indeed in rubble.

In a moment, we'll hear about the logistics of a project like rebuilding Gaza, but first we're joined by Samir Hullili, who chairs the Palestine Stock Exchange, along with two real estate companies with holdings in Gaza, and he hopes to be part of the rebuilding process in the strip. We've reached him in Ramallah, in the West Bank. Samir, hello.

Hello. Hi, how are you Bank. Samir, hello. Hello, hi, how are you? I'm well, thanks. What was your reaction when you heard Donald Trump's vision for Gaza? To be frank, I was stunned because I didn't hear the businessman talking about businesses in Gaza. It was more a political statement,

and which we have heard really a lot from Israelis. You know that half of the Palestinians do live outside Palestine. We have seven million Palestinians living within Palestine, Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, and the other half outside Palestine, who were deported anyway during the 1948 war and the 1967 war and other wars.

So this is a repeated experience which we have had with the Israelis, and it's only now repeated by the American president. I do appreciate his interest in doing business in Gaza, rebuilding Gaza, to be part of it, although I have a comment that, you know, most of the destruction in Gaza was basically out of the American money and Israeli weapons and American weapons. However, we have really contacted since a year American companies, Egyptian companies and others trying to find partnerships in order to help in rebuilding Gaza.

This is our interest. We were there since 1994 and we'll continue to be there and we are very much interested in being part of rebuilding Gaza. Could I just ask you one more thing just about Donald Trump's plan? He's very insistent on this. He has said that the Jordan and Egypt would take Palestinians that would be moved out of Gaza. He's going to be speaking with the Jordanian king about that today. What do you think is at stake if Palestinians are forced to leave Gaza in the process of rebuilding, at the very least?

Look, it's not the process of rebuilding. It has nothing to do with the process. Basically, this was an Israeli dream since long, and they have succeeded in implementing it like half the population is out, and they would like to continue this. So from my perspective as a businessman and as somebody who is interested and eager to help in rebuilding Gaza, there is no need to end the presence of one or one and a half

million Palestinians in Gaza. From my experience as a businessman, I like to see crowded markets. I like to see Singapore and Hong Kong like. Gaza is similar to Hong Kong and Singapore, so the number of population is an asset, it's not a burden. And I'd like to see that in rebuilding Gaza or even in consuming our goods and products in Gaza. So the whole approach is highly political and it has nothing to do with business or even with humanitarian assistance to Gaza. You have, as I mentioned, two real estate companies that have holdings in Gaza. What do you know about those properties? Look, we have the first, the only big resort in Gaza. It's a five-star hotel. We have chalets on the beach, around 162 chalets. Both were destroyed

fully in the last, I mean almost a year ago. And we have also an investment, a major one, in the only industrial zone at the border of, with Israel, at Karni. Also it was destroyed fully. Israel, also it was destroyed fully. We are partnering in the Power Generation station in Gaza, the only one also in Gaza. We are partners in it, we are shareholders. In addition, we have a lot of land next to the beaches of Gaza. And although everything was destroyed, which we have photos of it and we're trying, we have established a lot of plans for the land and for the hotel and for others. I mean, this is our life, we're there since 30 years, and we think that we can easily rebuild it

in the coming Gaza, Gaza after. And that's why we were looking for American companies and Egyptian companies, and even we looked for Turkish and Chinese technologies to do that properly and fast. So from our perspective, we're ready, we have the money, and we have the interest. The question is, what's happening in Gaza? What's the plan for Gaza?

What would happen to those plans if Donald Trump were to be able to move forward on his idea? Look, I don't think he can move forward on this idea. You think it's a non-starter. You think what he's talking about is simply not going to happen. Of course. Look, if I'm going to invest in Gaza, I have nothing to do with people leaving or people not allowed to come back. This is highly political. If he is occupying Gaza, I mean, even the Israelis, they are occupying Gaza for 30 years now and more since 1967, and they didn't dare to speak about it as blunt and as vocal as Mr. Trump have done.

I don't think it's attainable and it's possible, no matter the pressures that will be done on the CC and on the King Abdullah. However, again, I'm not a politician to speak about it. I'm the business part. And all what I'm saying is that we are open and ready to do business with American business community to help in rebuilding Gaza or investing in Gaza and after. It is going to take an extraordinary amount of money to begin a rebuilding process. And we're gonna speak in a moment about

the practicalities of that, how you go about clearing out the rubble, how you go about thinking about rebuilding. But who would pay for something like this? As a business person, who are you turning to to look for investors? The question is first, can you make the rubble issue a business by itself?

Because in the previous wars, in 14, 12, 9, and 2008, it was a business. So people were reusing it for pavement off-roads and so on. I mean, they managed to reuse it. However, it wasn't mechanized and it wasn't as big as it is now. So the problem is there. Now, doing the infrastructure and clearing the rubble is, of course, something that donors usually come in and they put their money in it.

However, the question is, is it open for investors like us who have the land, who have the knowledge, who know the people, who have their own employees in Gaza? Is it possible, would it be possible that we partner in this and do our own projects? That's the question. Now our projects are well, I would say, they are well in the direct need of the people there. We will not start maybe with a five-star hotel,

but for sure we have other plans to do in particular in housing and in food processing and in others in the industrial zone. But is your sense that people want to invest in this, that there are investors that would be willing to put money up for this? A lot, a lot. Remember, I'm talking about a consumer market.

It's a big consumer market in a very small size of land. Gaza was always profitable for people because it's too small and it has 2.5 million. So getting rid of the consumers was never a business idea. And there is nothing clever about it. It's exactly the opposite. And I think we need to make sure that we'll use and we'll do proper planning for Gaza. You know, in 2016, we as the business community, we have recruited an American company

to do a master plan for Gaza after the war. And this plan is extremely, of course it's ready. However, at that time, I remember the major experts of that company told us that you are fortunate to have something similar to Hong Kong and Singapore, because that's where money will come. That's where consumers will be available, and it will be very short, very small. Who would be in charge of this new Gaza? My perspective is that, of course, the Palestinian Authority is still the one responsible. Do you believe that it has the legitimacy and the trust of Palestinians to run Gaza?

There is no other option at this point. However, I have to tell you that we need, and the Palestinian Authority need to be tolerant and flexible in listening to what the needs of donors. For example, I didn't hear anything about Trump or the Americans putting money in Gaza. They were talking about investing in Gaza, maybe using the Saudi money, maybe keeping the security of Gaza using the Egyptian army, but not the Americans. So my perspective is that we need to be sensitive to the needs of Gaza using the Egyptian army, but not the American. So my perspective is that we need to be sensitive to the needs of the international community on security

issues like Israel, of course, on financial issues and transparency for sure. But the legitimacy is extremely important. What are the laws that will be prevailing in Gaza? I mean, what we have is we have a system, we have laws, regulations, we have culture. I mean, what we have is we have a system, we have laws, regulations, we have culture. I mean, it's an integral part of Palestinian areas, and it cannot be just taken out from it and given to another and then bring an American or other culture and laws and regulations and so on. If you're talking about being sensitive to, for example, Israeli security concerns, one of the concerns is that Hamas is still in control on the ground in Gaza.

They have recruited many people in the wake of this war as the war has continued, and Israeli officials have said that the presence of Hamas going forward is unacceptable. So what do you do about this? Of course. No, no, I agree. I agree with that. And the second phase of the truce, of this agreement that is now under implementation is basically negotiating the arms of Hamas and the presence of Hamas and the leaders of Hamas.

This is an integral part of the negotiation. It's not us who will be doing it. It's the Israelis with Egypt and Qatar will be negotiating this with the presence of the Americans, of course, with Hamas. And for sure, I understand very well that Hamas should, as an armed group, should disappear from Gaza. However, Hamas can continue always to be a political group, but nothing more. And this has to be handled and dealt with in this second phase next month. What role do you think Israel should play in rebuilding Gaza?

Should funds come, for example, from Israel to help with the rebuild? It's a hard question for us to answer because they always prefer to destroy. And the destruction was not because they wanted to uproot Hamas from Gaza, but just basically to punish the people and to make sure that it's not livable anymore. However, we always cooperated with Israeli firms in rebuilding or in doing business. I mean, the relationship between Palestine and Israel is connected with almost $5.5 billion of imports from Israel

and around $1.3 billion of exports to Israel. So this is a lot. So for sure, nothing we will do, nothing we can do, is without presence and participation and contribution from Israeli firms. Now if you're talking about the government of Israel, I don't think this is required. I think what's required from the government of Israel is just to lift the siege on Gaza, open the doors for goods to go in and out, and make sure that, again, they fulfill the agreements that they have signed with Hamas recently to the second and third phase.

If this is done, I think we are building confidence with the donors, confidence with the investors. And for sure, I have to say that ending this conflict between Israel and Palestine, it's a prerequisite, it's a must. Just finally, if you were to look 10 years ahead, what do you think Gaza will look like in a decade? Prosperous.

But remember, again, I'm just reminding myself with the top urban architect who was doing the master planning of Gaza. He said in 2050, Gaza and Tel Aviv will be connected. He's talking about the human factor, workers going in, working in Israel, goods coming from Israel into Gaza and vice versa. From my perspective, Gaza has a lot of potential. I see it positive. Ten years will be enough if the political issue is solved and if all the parties, including the Israelis, are inclusive and included in any arrangement to rebuild Gaza. Samir, good to speak with you. Thank you very much. Always. Thank you very much. Always, thank you. Samir Hallele, chair of the Palestine Stock Exchange,

along with two real estate companies with holdings in Gaza. We reached him in Ramallah in the West Bank. Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you got to know, and the conversations your

friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. The political challenges to rebuilding Gaza are enormous. So are the logistics.

Mark Yarzombek is a professor of history and theory of architecture at MIT. He's in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mark, good morning to you. Uh, good morning. I had read somewhere that 60% the United Nations believes that 60% of the buildings in Gaza are destroyed. There could be as much as 42 million tons of debris.

This would be enough to fill dump trucks that would stretch all the way from New York City to Singapore. When you are facing that, where do you start? Well, you're right. I mean, this is going to be an unprecedented situation of removal and in an area that is extremely tight. And now that the many Gaza residents are worried that if they leave, they're not going to come back, they're not going to be leaving. So they will be there, right? You

know, where all the demolition is taking place in nearby shelters or tents or wherever because of this anxiety. And so this removal process is gonna take years. My estimation is gonna even probably last well into a decade. There is the belief of a lot of unexploded weaponry as well, experts were saying that this could take decades just to get that weaponry out.

Is that, I mean, walk us through some of the practicalities of this. Is that where you begin this process? Well, the process would be first in an engineering assessment. The property is you have to bring an engineer. You can't just have people with dump trucks and wheelbarrows taking this stuff away.

It's heavy. It's dangerous. It's heavy, it's dangerous, it's reinforced concrete. It needs an expert to understand how to remove these things and how to demolish them. You'll need hundreds of experts and they have to be brought in from all parts of the world. You'll need translators, they have to go property by property. They have to figure out which one, which properties need to be removed down to the ground, which properties nominally can be salvaged in some way. And, you know, where it has to be registered and some sort of massive managerial project

to sort of organize this in some way. Where do you take all of that rubble? If 60% of the buildings have been destroyed, where does the concrete and the rebar and everything else go? Well, that's a billion dollar question right there. Certainly it's not gonna be brought over the border to Israel.

And certainly there will be difficulties saying, let's bring it out into the Mediterranean and dump it because it contains toxic elements. And so the only possibility at the moment is bringing it out through Egypt. But that has difficulties because before the war, 500 trucks entered Gaza daily with humanitarian goods. Now, after the war, I'm sure that'll be more. And if you add daily another 500 trucks filled with rubble trying to get through

the checkpoint, you have a bottleneck situation of unprecedented proportions, new roads and infrastructure have to be built to handle all of this. And then once it's, let's say, out into Egypt, where they're gonna put it into the desert, I mean, it has to go somewhere. Can you do all of that with a population still there? That is, I mean, this is their home. They, we've heard from people who they don't want to leave

and yet there is an extraordinary effort that's going to need to take place to remove all that rubble and debris that you've talked about. How do you do that if the population is right there? Yeah, that's gonna slow up the process considerably because the people will do be doing their daily lives and people will be wanting to go shopping and go to the market and go to this

and those same streets will be filled with dump trucks filled with rubble. So these things have to be separated out. You can't have people walking across the street and 500 dump trucks being held up. So this is really an infrastructural problem of how to manage all this coming and going. And you need to rebuild that infrastructure as well, right? Things like those roads, but also sanitation,

electrical grid, what have you. That's right. I mean, the word is being used is reconstruction, but what we're dealing with here is not reconstruction. It's really construction. I don't think anything's going to be reconstructed, right?

We're starting pretty much from all over again. And so, yeah, you might get these hotels and some office buildings and some hospitals, the area cleared out, and those might be built first as a way to jumpstart the economy. But the housing for the regular people, that's gonna be sort of second rung in terms of all of this and that's gonna be prefabricated elements

are probably gonna be brought in. And these housing units may or may not last a test of time and some will be temporary and temporary things become permanent. And next thing you know, you have a sort of a checkerboard of reality. Put on your professor of history of architecture hat for a moment.

Is there anything in history, people have made comparisons, for example, to the second world war. Is there anything in history that compares or would give us a bit of a roadmap to what we're seeing in Gaza? Well, sort of not because in the second world war, after the war, you still had functioning nation states, you still had banking systems that worked and that

were in, have been in place for hundreds and hundreds of years. Year sort of a new banking system is going to have to be created to manage the billions of dollars is one thing to manage the funding for a resort or hotel. There's another thing to manage the billions of dollars that are going to be pumped into the system and make sure that they're spent appropriately. So not really, I would say. The other closest analogy is Iraq, the rebuilding of Iraq. I think that was estimated at 50 billion. The United States put in, I think, something in the order of 20 billion. And I think people should look at that and see how successful or not that rebuilding was as a model for this. The United Nations has said that to rebuild Gaza

to its pre-war state could cost upwards of $80 billion. You have said that the cost, whatever it is, will be prohibitive. What are you looking at? And what sort of international agreement would need to be in place in order to get to that rebuilding? Well, yeah, I mean, $80 billion is a good starting figure. And unfortunately, I think one has to sort of add in the basic law or rule about this is that people promise more than they deliver. So at the moment, everybody's enthusiastic and they'll say, okay, we'll do this. But five years down the line, there'll be other crises, other problems.

All of a sudden, money will become less and less sparse and there will be issues and the problems will amount. So will the money be there 10 years from now, 15 years from now when the rebuilding is still happening? Can I just go back to something that you said earlier, which was really interesting, that rebuilding is perhaps the wrong word to use. That suggests that you're making something new in some ways.

Yes, I mean, I think in you know, in 10 years from now, Gaza will be unrecognizable to the older people who live in Gaza. If they were blindfolded and brought back, they won't recognize it, right? It'll be a completely new place. It just will have to be, because you'll have to have different type

of street layouts, you'll have to have different type of street layouts, you'll have to have different type of housing arrangements, you'll have different types of shopping and infrastructure. So yeah, it's going to be a task to try to figure that out and know when some of that infrastructure has to be made just for the removal and the impact of that removal infrastructure will impact the design that will be put into play. What is the timeline here? I mean, again, we heard from Samir Hallele, who is a business person who wants to, you know,

marshal investment for that rebuild. And his hope was that in 10 years, he believed Gaza would be prosperous. How long is this going to take, do you think? Well, there's difference between prosperous and having a area that looks like a urban area and not filled with piles of demolition here and there. So yeah, it has every possibility of being prosperous.

You can be prosperous and still live in ruins. And that's sort of what I think is gonna be the solution for at least the next 10, 15 years is to develop a prosperity in the shadow of ruins. But the timeline for it to not look like, I mean, you see the images that have come out thus far of, of a smashed territory in many ways. You're looking at decades.

Oh, yes. Yeah. You know, I think it's always good for developers to give us a rosy picture because that sort of helps us understand the future. But the, the, the reality from a construction point of view is we're talking decades. Decades.

Yeah. Mark, thank you very much. It's good to talk to you about this. Yep. All the best. Thank you. Mark, Marc Jarzombek is a professor of history and the theory of architecture at MIT.