Elected officials often have quirky hobbies, Boris Johnson used to build buses from old cardboard boxes, Theresa May used to run through wheat fields. These harmless pastimes hark back to an old age, at present our global power brokers seem on a whim to engage in more malicious forms of narcissistic opportunism. At no point was this more defined than at this year’s world economic forum in Davos. Once a venue for constructive dialogue between global leaders, but now more closely resembling a bake sale that pawns off spinoff intergovernmental organisations and PowerPoint presentations of a Gazan riviera.
Gaza is the next focus of the Trump spectacle, his newly formed Board of Peace, initially set out by the UN to implement Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan has evolved into a supranational body where Trump holds court. Unveiled at Davos, the body’s charter is committed to global peace, almost as if such an intergovernmental organisation hasn’t existed for the past 80 years. Gazan reconstruction is the board’s main undertaking followed by Ukrainian peace and reconstruction, an ordering of priorities that makes “Trump Construction Corporation” a more fitting rebrand. Unsurprisingly, Trump, a man with a penchant for Big Macs and obstructing justice has taken a delegatory approach to the reconstruction plans. Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and advisor on Palestinian issues, has taken charge. The role encompasses jet-setting across the Middle East to drum up private investment in Trump’s various interests including, but not limited to, Gaza.
Foreign capital, sustained private-sector investment and free market ideals are the basis for Kushner’s vision presented at the WEF. His PowerPoint focused on a utopian paradise where the Gazan waterfront was littered with glittering high rises, creating a view more analogous to Monaco or Dubai than the current hellscape. Currently, this paradise seems farfetched, over a million people continue to live in makeshift shelters, basic consumer items such as meat and vegetables are scarce and materials for minor reconstruction are being withheld by Israeli forces. This is primarily due to dramatic conflicts in Israeli and American foreign policy regarding the strip. While President Trump is more focused on turning Gaza into the next location for Formula One expansion and fostering consumerism à la Vegas, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu seems more intent on its destruction. To Netanyahu, “the next phase is not reconstruction, […] [t]he next phase is disarming Hamas.” Either way at this current impasse any progress on reconstruction is unlikely.
Now let us be hypothetical and assume Hamas demilitarises and the current Israeli government sets aside its genocidal impulses, is Kushner’s vision even remotely feasible? Kushner maintains that any reconstruction effort will include Palestinian involvement along with copious amounts of foreign private investment. However, it seems implausible that any post-reconstruction Gazan leadership retains any semblance of sovereignty when they ultimately remain at the behest of foreign private equity firms and western creditors. Another touted plan similarly backed by Trump proposes a five year transitional government that includes Palestinian technocrats but is ultimately headed by Tony Blair. Blair, whose stellar track record in the region does not include building buses with cardboard boxes or running through wheat fields but rather fantasy WMDs, hundreds of thousands of dead and a new wave of international terrorism, asserts his credibility in a perverse sense of self-aggrandisement. Fundamentally, both approaches reek of western hypocrisy and condescension that places Western business interests and Presidential greed over Gazan prosperity.
Two boys sit amidst rubble of destroyed buildings is by Mohammad Ibrahim on Unsplashed
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Davos and Gaza, the Patronising West on Full Display
Elected officials often have quirky hobbies, Boris Johnson used to build buses from old cardboard boxes, Theresa May used to run through wheat fields. These harmless pastimes hark back to an old age, at present our global power brokers seem on a whim to engage in more malicious forms of narcissistic opportunism. At no point was this more defined than at this year’s world economic forum in Davos. Once a venue for constructive dialogue between global leaders, but now more closely resembling a bake sale that pawns off spinoff intergovernmental organisations and PowerPoint presentations of a Gazan riviera.
Gaza is the next focus of the Trump spectacle, his newly formed Board of Peace, initially set out by the UN to implement Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan has evolved into a supranational body where Trump holds court. Unveiled at Davos, the body’s charter is committed to global peace, almost as if such an intergovernmental organisation hasn’t existed for the past 80 years. Gazan reconstruction is the board’s main undertaking followed by Ukrainian peace and reconstruction, an ordering of priorities that makes “Trump Construction Corporation” a more fitting rebrand. Unsurprisingly, Trump, a man with a penchant for Big Macs and obstructing justice has taken a delegatory approach to the reconstruction plans. Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and advisor on Palestinian issues, has taken charge. The role encompasses jet-setting across the Middle East to drum up private investment in Trump’s various interests including, but not limited to, Gaza.
Foreign capital, sustained private-sector investment and free market ideals are the basis for Kushner’s vision presented at the WEF. His PowerPoint focused on a utopian paradise where the Gazan waterfront was littered with glittering high rises, creating a view more analogous to Monaco or Dubai than the current hellscape. Currently, this paradise seems farfetched, over a million people continue to live in makeshift shelters, basic consumer items such as meat and vegetables are scarce and materials for minor reconstruction are being withheld by Israeli forces. This is primarily due to dramatic conflicts in Israeli and American foreign policy regarding the strip. While President Trump is more focused on turning Gaza into the next location for Formula One expansion and fostering consumerism à la Vegas, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu seems more intent on its destruction. To Netanyahu, “the next phase is not reconstruction, […] [t]he next phase is disarming Hamas.” Either way at this current impasse any progress on reconstruction is unlikely.
Now let us be hypothetical and assume Hamas demilitarises and the current Israeli government sets aside its genocidal impulses, is Kushner’s vision even remotely feasible? Kushner maintains that any reconstruction effort will include Palestinian involvement along with copious amounts of foreign private investment. However, it seems implausible that any post-reconstruction Gazan leadership retains any semblance of sovereignty when they ultimately remain at the behest of foreign private equity firms and western creditors. Another touted plan similarly backed by Trump proposes a five year transitional government that includes Palestinian technocrats but is ultimately headed by Tony Blair. Blair, whose stellar track record in the region does not include building buses with cardboard boxes or running through wheat fields but rather fantasy WMDs, hundreds of thousands of dead and a new wave of international terrorism, asserts his credibility in a perverse sense of self-aggrandisement. Fundamentally, both approaches reek of western hypocrisy and condescension that places Western business interests and Presidential greed over Gazan prosperity.
Two boys sit amidst rubble of destroyed buildings is by Mohammad Ibrahim on Unsplashed
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