Constructing on the superb put up by Michelle Burgis-Kasthala on UNSC Decision 2803 and President Donal Trump’s Complete Plan to Finish the Gaza Battle, annexed to this “deeply problematic Decision”, we want to discover right here the background and context of the bodily reconstruction proposals for Gaza contained on this Plan. Burgis-Kasthala rightly mentions that these plans are topic to a financing scheme with a really restricted position for the World Financial institution and donor states, as an alternative “extolling the Gulf dictatorships as financial position fashions and benefactors”. Past that already problematic financing mechanism, Gaza’s reconstruction as envisaged on this Plan is instantly associated to Trump’s style for “new cities-building”, that’s from-the-scratch and largely personal city developments, extensively indifferent from their broader nationwide and worldwide environments. What’s most placing for us as worldwide attorneys is that, in an unprecedented transfer, the UN Safety Council has totally endorsed a marketing strategy seizing a possibility from immense devastation and insupportable human struggling – a novelty as to its blatancy however sadly recalling “the long-standing relationship between imperialism, predatory capitalism, and worldwide regulation”, as famous by Janne Nijman beforehand on this weblog.
(Re)development, Improvement and New-Cities-Constructing
New-cities-building is a mannequin of city growth that has many various roots in mental historical past. Most just lately, such concepts have taken the type of proposed “constitution cities”, an concept initially developed round 2010 by former World Financial institution chief economist and Nobel laureate, Paul Romer, who envisioned the thought of latest cities constructed from scratch contained in the territory of less-developed international locations as a way to spice up their financial progress and total welfare. Constitution cities are closely influenced by the older and extra established notion of particular financial zones (SEZs), and therefore weak to a number of the similar criticisms on SEZs as being primarily involved with facilitating personal funding, largely FDI, by means of tax exemptions and deregulation. In Romer’s personal phrases, constitution cities are kinds of SEZ on a bigger scale, “with room for residents in addition to corporations”. Bigger-scale refers right here to the larger enclosure of personal area inside a state’s territory. This turns into clear when Romer relates his mannequin as “begin ups” to “opt-in”, going well-beyond conventional SEZs which don’t benefit from the diploma of self-government prerogatives, or particular personal jurisdiction, that the “constitution”, that could be a type of structure of the brand new metropolis, is supposed to supply to those new city enclaves.
As historian Quinn Slobodian eloquently places it, “those that grew to become most enthusiastic about Romer’s plan (…) weren’t current states like Canada however entrepreneurial libertarians who thought it is likely to be good to have a mini-state of their very own (…) a self-conscious option to make company governance the muse of human group”. Accordingly, the constitution metropolis dream has been closely promoted by the Constitution Cities Institute (CCI), a non-for-profit personal group primarily based in California, pushed by techno-libertarian visions and anarcho-capitalist concepts. It has very robust ties with the Seasteading Institute, which promotes the creation of floating cities on the Ocean, “OUTSIDE of all Unique Financial Zones”. In each circumstances, the main tenet is to create areas able to escaping public jurisdiction as a lot as doable, or in Surabhi Ranganathan’s phrases, areas which may overcome “the tedium of established types of regulation and authorities”. In the present day, one of many principal tasks of CCI is the promotion and creation of so-called “freedom cities” within the US.
Donald Trump’s Flavour for New Cities and the Beginnings of his Gaza Plan
When campaigning for a second time period as US president, Donald Trump repeatedly evoked the thought of constructing “freedom cities” throughout the US. In response to Trump, folks might transfer to those new cities in the event that they discovered themselves alienated by the prevailing ideological, political and social mores of US huge metropolises in the intervening time – all of that are supposedly leaning extra in direction of the liberal-progressive aspect of the political spectrum (for a essential appraisal, see Woodworth).
As soon as in workplace for his second time period, President Trump ventilated the ludicrous and de-humanizing plan to show the Gaza strip right into a “Riviera on the Mediterranean”, involving the elimination of the Gazan inhabitants to locations the place they may lead a greater life – and never stand in the best way of growing the Gaza strip into one thing which may solely be described as a real-estate fantasy venture, grotesquely detailed within the utterly overblown AI-generated video on “Trump Gaza”. Trump introduced his imaginative and prescient of what has been ridiculed as a Gaz-a-Lago, throughout a joint press convention with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu within the White Home, on February 4 2025. In response to that proposal, Gazans could be free to depart or keep, but when they selected to depart, they’d not be allowed to return. In a merciless and demeaning manner, the blatantly unlawful Trump Gaza plan could possibly be understood as a slanted merger of two conceptions of constitution cities in a single: creating a brand new city sphere within the Palestinian territory of the Gaza strip which aspires to draw wealthy migrants from internationally, as some type of real-estate venture, and the simultaneous relocation of the Gazan inhabitants which might inevitably additionally require the development of latest websites of residing – it’s everybody’s guess whether or not these new conurbations would resemble extra the supposedly shiny new city agglomeration within the Gaza strip or the refugee camps by which thousands and thousands of Palestinians have lived for many years.
Decision 2803 and the Actual Property Plan
In the beginning, Trump’s plans on Gaza appeared delusional and derailed to many, arguably not price of taking significantly. Sadly, nevertheless, these concepts entered his Complete Plan to Finish the Gaza Battle, of September 2025, which was endorsed by the UN Safety Council in Decision 2803 on 17 November 2025, and reproduced in toto in its Annex 1. Whereas Burgis-Kasthala has already reproduced Level 10 of the Plan, which offers with the financing of Gaza’s reconstruction, allow us to mirror additional on this, and reproduce it now along with Level 11:
“10. A Trump financial growth plan to rebuild and energize Gaza will probably be created by convening a panel of specialists who’ve helped start a number of the thriving fashionable miracle cities within the Center East. Many considerate funding proposals and thrilling growth concepts have been crafted by well-meaning worldwide teams, and will probably be thought-about to synthesize the safety and governance frameworks to draw and facilitate these investments that can create jobs, alternative, and hope for future Gaza.
11. A particular financial zone will probably be established with most well-liked tariff and entry charges to be negotiated with collaborating international locations.” (emphasis added)
Whereas there isn’t a direct reference to constitution cities in these traces, the references to “fashionable cities miracles” and “funding proposals and thrilling growth concepts” clearly echo a complete set of libertarian plans which construct on the notion of SEZs and which consist of making pockets of (city) areas which might discover themselves disconnected from their surrounding political geography, i.e. taken out of the pocket of the given nationwide territory of a state. Moreover, a significant concern with such a “peace plan” is how the transformation of Gaza right into a SEZ, with the ensuing safety and governance frameworks emanating from concepts on “fashionable miracle cities” (which might very properly be the “constitution”, certainly) will stand in the best way of a two state resolution in the long term.
Constitution cities and the development of latest city areas extra typically can minimize in several methods: they are often deployed as a way to venture utopian plans for a supposedly higher city future for individuals who purchase into a specific imaginative and prescient additionally they inevitably work to the detriment of enormous plenty of people that would undergo enormously from the concrete realization of those plans. Within the Gaza instance that is much more readily obvious than within the case of “freedom cities”. Though Level 12 of the Complete Plan on Gaza now mentions that “nobody will probably be compelled to depart Gaza and those that want to depart will probably be free to take action and free to return” (apparently rectifying probably the most troubling points of unique Trump Gaza plan), there are well-grounded issues that this plan might finally consequence within the mass expulsion of civilians from Gaza which might, if carried out, doubtlessly qualify as a criminal offense towards humanity.
The endorsement of Trump’s 20 factors by the Safety Council and the accompanying decision elevate additional questions. A key factor of Decision 2803 is that the so-called Board of Peace (BoP), which is meant to manipulate Gaza till the Palestinian Authority has reformed to a level that the “credible pathway to Palestinian statehood” can lastly be recognized, is bestowed with worldwide authorized persona. This step is a unprecedented type of creating a brand new entity with worldwide authorized persona by advantage of a UN Safety Council Decision which doesn’t appear to be anchored in worldwide regulation classes however as an alternative has contours extra akin to these of a company identification. Arguably, this Decision additionally constitutes an unprecedented means by means of which the Safety Council bypasses the UN itself and internationally acknowledged post-conflict efforts in favour of an entrepreneurial experiment centred on personal funding, which is another excuse why we agree with Burgis-Kasthala that that is “a historic and deeply problematic Decision”.
As with many different points of Trump’s 20 factors plan for Gaza, it is extremely unsure whether or not and if that’s the case by which kind it will likely be carried out. It’s simply as possible for the BoP to see the sunshine of day as your entire 20 factors plan being shelved totally. Whereas this query of the sensible implementation of the plan is after all essential for the lives of Gazans, one can argue that the side-effects of the sort of regional personal ordering by the UN Safety Council will persist in any manner. By totally endorsing the 20 factors plan and elevating the BoP to the extent of an actor with worldwide authorized persona, this worldwide authorized growth contributes to an entrenchment of libertarian concepts of personal ordering – maybe harking back to older types of “territorial and infrastructural acquisition” and of “commodification of a complete territory” (Nijman)— into present and messy world re-ordering strikes.
