AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at the Trump administration’s contested plans for a postwar Gaza. As President Trump formally inaugurated his so-called Board of Peace at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, presented his vision of turning Gaza into an upscale, futuristic seaside resort with gleaming skyscrapers and entirely new cities, an ambitious proposal that would require an investment of at least $25 billion.

Kushner outlined the so-called Gaza master plan as he presented slides, one of which showed a map of the besieged territory divided into different zones. Kushner said the first phase of the project would be to rebuild the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which was leveled by Israeli attacks. The Rafah border crossing with Egypt is expected to reopen next week. Families in Gaza fear Israel and the U.S. will move to forcibly displace them to another country.

This is Jared Kushner laying out his plan.

JARED KUSHNER: We’ve developed ways to redevelop Gaza. Gaza, as President Trump’s been saying, has amazing potential. And this is for the people of Gaza. We’ve developed it into zones. In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, “Let’s build a free zone, and then we have a Hamas zone.” And then we said, “You know what? Let’s just plan for plan for catastrophic success.”

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump presented his concluding remarks on the plan Thursday, saying, quote, “We’re going to be very successful in Gaza.”

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’m a real estate person at heart. And it’s all about location. And I said, “Look at this location on the sea. Look at this beautiful piece of property, what it could be for so many people. It’ll be so, so great. People that are living so poorly are going to be living so well.”

AMY GOODMAN: This all comes as Palestinians in Gaza struggle to survive with little food or shelter due to Israel’s relentless blockade of humanitarian aid. This is Mohammed Al-Qudra in Khan Younis responding to Trump’s plan for Gaza.

MOHAMMED AL-QUDRA: [translated] No matter how much he says, it’s all in vain. Why? Because we, as citizens, aren’t seeing any real change on the ground. The suffering remains the same. Rain. There are no tents, no shelters, as you can see, the destruction. Wood, we don’t have that. … President Trump announced that the second phase had begun, but we haven’t seen anything. People in al-Mawasi are living in tents, displaced. People in the east can’t reach their homes. You can hear the shooting, the shelling, day and night, martyrs.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Sharif Abdel Kouddous, the award-winning journalist and Middle East-North Africa editor at Drop Site News. His new piece is headlined “Leaked Documents: 'Planned Community' in Rafah Would Force Palestinians into Israeli Panopticon.” He’s joining us from Los Angeles.

Sharif, thanks so much for being with us on Democracy Now! Start off by responding to what happened yesterday in Davos, Switzerland, President Trump, surrounded by many autocrats of the world, signing on to a charter agreement for the so-called Board of Peace, which Trump will lead even beyond his presidency, lead indefinitely. He personally has veto power and is in charge of the money, apparently a billion dollars a seat for those who will be part of this Board of Peace. If you can respond to that and then lay out what you’ve learned from leaked documents?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right. Well, it’s a billion dollars to have permanent — a permanent seat. People who signed up get three years.

But, you know, if we look at the charter of the Board of Peace, there’s no mention of Palestine. There’s no mention of Palestinians. There’s no mention of Gaza. There’s no mention of the right of return. There’s no mention of the right to self-determination.

What it does say is that, you know, Trump is chairman for life, and it gives him these king-like powers, where he can only be replaced if he resigns or if he is deemed incapacitated under — but it needs to be a unanimous vote, that, you know, is kind of unattainable. He can appoint new member states. He can veto any decision.

And so, you have this Board of Peace. You have what’s called the founding Executive Board underneath that, that has people like Jared Kushner, Marco Rubio and others on it. And then you have something under that called the Gaza Executive Board, which is made up of Palestinian technocrats that are supposed to implement these policies.

So, this is almost a farcical manifestation of colonialism in the 21st century. It’s kind of like a parody of a colonial body. You know, if you had proposed this a few years ago, you would have been laughed out of the room, except that now it’s actually real.

And at the event yesterday — you played a clip of it — Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, you know, delivered this presentation of what he called the “master plan” for Gaza’s redevelopment and reconstruction. And yeah, you saw these kind of — you know, these renderings of high coastal towers and mixed zones and so forth. It looked like an AI fantasy.

And let me just say, one of the — one of the slides in the presentation included Arabic script incorrectly written in reverse, so from left to right — Arabic script is written from right to left — and with the letters disconnected. So, I mean, you know, it’s hard to take these people seriously. I mean, they’re buffoonish. But the problem is, is that they control the largest military and economy in the world.

So, but what we actually — you know, when he talks about residential zones and the future of Gaza, we actually now have a glimpse of what is actually being planned. And it is extremely frightening. It’s very Orwellian.

So, first, what we have to understand is that Gaza has effectively been cut in half. So, after October 10th, the Israeli military withdrew to what’s called now the yellow line, and they occupy and control over 50% of the Gaza Strip. And analysis of satellite imagery by Forensic Architecture, that we published at Drop Site News, shows how Israel is physically altering the geography of the land in that part of Gaza east of the yellow line that it does control. So, what they’re doing is they’re constructing a lot of military infrastructure. There’s been 13 military outposts built just since the ceasefire, so now there’s something like 48 or 50 military outposts in this area. They’ve also built roads that are being connected to bases and settlements outside of Gaza in Israel. And what they’re doing, essentially, is establishing facts on the ground — this is what Israel always does — facts on the ground that will eventually become permanent. And actually, just yesterday, we found out that Israel is digging a trench that is many meters deep along the yellow line in Gaza, basically to prevent Palestinians from crossing from one side to the other, to the side that Israel controls. So Gaza is literally being cut in half with a moat.

So, this is the new reality. And what they’re doing, in addition to this construction of military outposts and roads, is also systematic destruction of Palestinian property, of buildings and of infrastructure. And what we found, what Forensic Architecture found through the satellite analysis, is that there’s one square kilometer between two military corridors in southern Gaza, in Rafah, where Israel is engaged in a pattern that’s not visible anywhere else. What they’re doing is they are razing the land, they’re compacting the ground, and they’re clearing the rubble. And they’re doing this in a way that suggests this is the site of the first so-called residential zone, or planned community, where it’s going to be built. And we know that they’re starting in Rafah.

And so, what will this so-called planned community look like? Last week, the Civil-Military Coordination Center, the CMCC, which is a U.S.-led body, held a presentation for this so-called planned community. Now, the CMCC was established by CENTCOM a week after the ceasefire went into effect. It’s led by a U.S. Army lieutenant general, you know, and it’s supposed to oversee and monitor the implementation of the ceasefire. And it’s located in this, you know, big warehouse in southern Israel. And last week, they held this big presentation for this planned community, that’s supposed to house up to 25,000 Palestinians in Rafah. And we obtained leaked documents of this presentation, and they kind of very meticulously outline what this area is going to look like. It goes through, you know, the municipality, the economy, health, education, law and order. And after actually reviewing a transcript of these materials, which we sent to Jonathan Whittall, who is a former senior U.N. official, you know, in Palestine from 2002 to 2005 — I’m sorry, 2022 to '25. He said that these new communities, built on the rubble of people's homes, are not only governance labs to test ultimate control and subjugation, but they’re also the reincarnation of refugee camps.

So, we can go through, you know, some of what these documents show. So, let me just briefly say. So, first, it provides a set of criteria for deciding which Palestinians will be, quote, “invited” to live there. And this includes undergoing security checks to prevent the entry of what they called Hamas elements. It doesn’t specify who’s going to be doing these security checks, but historically in Gaza, movement of Palestinians, for example, in and out of Gaza has always been controlled by COGAT, which is the branch of the Israeli military that oversees the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. So, to enter the so-called housing zone, or planned community, Palestinians will have to pass through a security checkpoint, and everyone entering will be registered with biometric documentation to enable them to move around, to enable them to access services, and that registry will be based on Palestinian ID numbers in coordination with COGAT. So, you know, the Israeli military already has an incredible amount of monitoring and surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza, but this gives them yet another layer of monitoring through biometric documentation.

For the economy, for example, it brings all economic transactions under increased surveillance. So, Gaza, historically, has a cash-based economy. Now Palestinians living in this zone will use something called electronic shekel wallets to do transactions. It also says that residents should be able to import products into Gaza, but those products will be subject to security checks at the crossings. It makes no mention of the fact that Israel controls all the crossings. And as we know, for the last 20 years, they’ve enforced a siege on Gaza where they prevented many goods from coming in.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sharif? Sharif?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And perhaps most — go ahead, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, Sharif, if I can just interrupt you. I’m just trying to get a sense of the issue of the so-called Palestinian technocrats, that are supposedly — that will be supposedly implementing this. Could you talk about that aspect of it and the relationship of these so-called technocrats to the resistance forces within Gaza?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, I mean, these are different people, among them, Ali Shaath, who is the head of it, who’s a former member of the Palestinian Authority. You know, he’s the one who announced at the event, through video link, yesterday at Davos that the Rafah border crossing will be open in both ways next week. They’re selected to, you know, implement these policies on the ground. Originally, the idea was that different Palestinian factions would appoint this kind of committee through a democratic process, but that didn’t happen. They were just selected by the U.S., by Israel and so forth.

The reaction of Palestinian factions to their appointments has been actually interesting. They haven’t — they haven’t outright condemned them for joining this. Hamas put out a statement that seems semi-supportive of them. And I think, you know, they’ve been put in a position where any Palestinian kind of input to try and get some aid into Gaza, to try and ease the suffering of Palestinians, to try and, you know, help engineer what the future of Gaza will be, was kind of welcome. But the problem is, is that they are multi layers down in this hierarchical structure, this colonial mandate structure that is overseeing Gaza. You have the Board of Peace. You have Trump as emperor of it. You have this founding Executive Committee. And then, you know, they’re under that. They have absolutely no sovereignty, no control and no real say over the decisions of the lives of Palestinians in Gaza.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you’ve written that this proposed — this first proposed residential zone is sometimes referred to as the Emirati compound. Could you talk about the role of the UAE in all of this?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yeah, it’s referred to in the presentation as the Emirati compound. It’s unclear, you know, why that name was chosen. There is the Emirati Field Hospital in Rafah, that is not far from the site where this first zone is being built.

Now, you know, under the education part of this presentation for — this is perhaps the kind of like the most Orwellian part of it. It says that they should create schooling and a curriculum that, quote, “will not be Hamas-based but will follow 'Culture of Peace' principles, e.g., modeled after the UAE,” end-quote. Now, that phrase, a “Culture of Peace,” is mentioned in the normalization agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel that was signed in 2020 as part of the Abraham Accords. Now, since then, the UAE has normalized relations with Israel more than any other Arab country. They have very robust trade, tourism, defense deals, surveillance, like, tech deals. And it seems that this idea of — you know, the education idea for this housing zone is aimed at promoting an Emirati-inspired reeducation program that will promote normalization with Israel.

And, you know, the last thing I’ll say about this presentation is that it also says that the land on which it’s being built, they need to examine the private rights of Palestinian property holders, so they can see about mechanisms for compensation to these — you know, whoever’s land it once was. They have the nerve to mention private property rights of Palestinians in Gaza, where nearly the entire population has been displaced, mostly multiple times. Nearly every building has been damaged or destroyed outright. And, you know, there’s a genocide, where Israel has created the conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians. And so, they coldly talk about private property rights as if — and compensation, as if this genocidal war, that we’ve all witnessed for over two years, never happened. But, essentially, you know, that’s the vision of what’s to come.

We heard Jared Kushner say, you know, “We’re not going to do the free zone and the Hamas zone.” And he’s referring to those two sides of the yellow line, which is kind of how it stands, you know, one side where most Palestinians are, and the other side that’s controlled by Israel. He said, you know, “We want” — what did he say? — “catastrophic success.” And you saw the rendering showing all of Gaza.

I don’t think that’s what’s actually going to happen. We’re seeing now, as I mentioned before, there’s a trench literally being built that’s splitting Gaza in half. Israel is consolidating control. And what you’re going to have is these Orwellian housing zones where Israel and outside forces have complete economic, social and security control over every aspect of the lives of a new generation of dispossessed Palestinians who are corralled into these spaces. And then, in this kind of like other half of Gaza, you’re going to be left with Palestinians living in a wasteland, where no construction is allowed to be conducted, that’s under constant assault by Israeli bombs, where there’s hardly any food, there’s hardly any shelter, and they’re, you know, left to survive under conditions of genocide. And this is the future that they’re trying to write for Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, we just have a minute, but I had to ask you about the attacks that continue in Gaza, killing at least 11 Palestinians Wednesday, including three journalists who were working with the Egyptian Committee for Gaza Relief. Mohammad Qeshta, Abdul Ra’ouf Shaath and Anas Ghunaim were killed when an Israeli missile struck their vehicle. Shaath was a contributor to CBS News, Agence France-Presse. He had just gotten married. Mohammed Mansour of the Egyptian Committee for Gaza Relief condemned Israel’s attack on the journalists. This is what he said.

MOHAMMED MANSOUR: [translated] What happened is a very big crime committed by the Israeli army by targeting a crew belonging to the Egyptian committee. This crew was not firing rockets nor fighting the Israeli army. The Egyptian committee’s crew was on a humanitarian mission. This crew is searching day and night for a shelter to house our people.

AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, can you tell us about these three journalists? Again, according to the International Federation of Journalists, at least something like 258 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza in the last two years.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yeah, as you mentioned, this is Mohammad Qeshta, Anas Ghunaim and Abdul Ra’ouf Shaath, who was actually a freelance cameraman and a longtime cameraman for CBS News and Agence France-Presse. And they were killed while they were in their car recording footage of a tent encampment for displaced people in central Gaza. They were killed about a mile away from that camp. The Egyptian committee that hired them, that they were working for, said the car was clearly marked, and yet the Israelis bombed it anyway.

And this is part of a pattern that we’ve seen over the past two years, where the Israeli military has killed an unprecedented number of journalists with complete impunity. And it came as world leaders are gathering in Davos and talking about, you know, so-called a Board of Peace and so forth. And it’s sad to say that these types of killings of journalists, of Palestinian civilians every day hardly make waves anymore. It’s become normalized in the world for Palestinians to die. And the world has allowed this to happen. And this is, you know, yet another blow to the journalistic community in Gaza, that has suffered more than we’ve seen, you know, in any part of the world in generations.

AMY GOODMAN: And more than just a blow to the journalists of Gaza, but to the journalists of the world. Sharif Abdel Kouddous, we thank you so much for being with us, award-winning journalist, the Middle East-North Africa editor at Drop Site News. We’ll link to your piece headlined “Leaked Documents: 'Planned Community' in Rafah Would Force Palestinians into Israeli Panopticon.”

Next up, we go to Minneapolis. We’ll speak with the lawyer for Nekima Levy Armstrong, who’s still in jail after being arrested for peacefully protesting in a St. Paul church where a top ICE official serves as pastor. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Rhythm of Love” by Ahmet Ali Arslan.