NONE DARE CALL IT GENTRIFICATION.

A long time ago, when Our Political Masters still had illusions of nation building, I opted to be provocative.

I claim no expertise in matters geopolitical, but wish to observe that the liberation of Iraq has a lot in common with urban gentrification.  [Say what??] (Bear with me)  People who get into urban gentrification like to find fancy old houses that they can buy on the cheap and fix up over the course of years. That often involves living in neighborhoods that are, well, trashed. From my experience with the phenomenon, such people do not like to be thought of as urban pioneers, as that image gives the suggestion that all was wilderness before they came. Think of Iraq as a fixer-upper in an old neighborhood (goes back to the Garden of Eden and Hammurabi and Scheherezade.) It's a fixer-upper with a lot of potential (some of the upper-middle-class Baghdad neighborhoods I saw in the 1991 Gulf War coverage had a Californian look to them, and the schools and agriculture and energy industries used to work well, although it has been a few years since the Baghdad Orient Express left for Istanbul.) One of the downsides of gentrification is that your work will attract the attention of thieves, and you might have to exercise some effort to persuade the dope peddlers and hookers to ply their trade elsewhere. (Substitute Islamofascists and Ba'athist nostalgics.) Thus, expect some trouble. The difficult test will be for the coalition to find the right mix of power and example to deal with the trouble (sometimes you have to send in the cops and take a few crack houses down, sometimes success in one neighborhood will lead to imitation in other neighborhoods.)

That didn't turn out too well for the Iraqis, whether Arab, Kurd, or any other ethnicity.

Here in These United States, though, gentrification is a politer way of saying "urban renewal," which skeptics have long understood as "Negro removal."  These days, the Perennially Irritated have taken to thinking of the urban rent gradient doing what urban rent gradients do as internal colonization.  "I don't recall any such solicitude when those neighborhoods changed during the era of block-busting and red-lining, about being colonized. But now the meme that gentrification is colonization is everywhere."

Now, the gentrifiers are coming for Gaza.

The White House is "circulating" a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into US President Donald Trump's vision of a high-tech "Riviera of the Middle East" brimming with private investment and replete with artificial intelligence-powered "smart cities."

That's according [to] a 38-page prospectus for a proposed Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration, and Transformation (GREAT) Trust obtained by The Washington Post and published in a report on Sunday. Parts of the proposal were previously reported by the Financial Times.

"Gaza can transform into a Mediterranean hub for manufacturing, trade, data, and tourism, benefiting from its strategic location, access to markets... resources, and a young workforce all supported by Israeli tech and [Gulf Cooperation Council] investments," the prospectus states.

However, to journalist Hala Jaber, the plan amounts to "genocide packaged as real estate."

Ward-heeler politicians, whether in Detroit or in Gaza, do what ward-heeler politicians do.  "Seriously, dear reader, how hard is it to screw up BEACH FRONT PROPERTY?  By putting it in the hands of the Levantine version of ward-heeler politicians, that's how."  The Gaza version of a ward-heeler politician, argues Elliott Abrams, who has some expertise in matters geopolitical, seeks re-election through the continued misery of his constituents, rather than in, oh, developing the BEACH FRONT PROPERTY.

Daniel Pipes has commented on this many times, writing of what he called the Palestinians’ “genocidal rejectionism.” Why haven’t peace and Palestinian statehood prevailed? In the early years, Pipes wrote, “The local population, which we now call Palestinians, didn’t want them there and told them to get out. And [the Zionists] responded by saying no, we are modern Westerners, we can bring you clean water and electricity. But Palestinians engaged in rejectionism, and said, ‘No, we want to kill you; we’re going to drive you away.’” Over a century ago, the Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky explained that this is the response the Jews should expect to such offers of economic advancement, although he believed the attitude would change in the fullness of time. But little has changed

And now, the Israelis are in a position to drive the rejectionists away, and Our President might want to cut the ribbon at a new Trump Casino.

The project would be a boon for companies ranging from builders including Saudi bin Laden Group, infrastructure specialists like IKEA, the mercenary firm Academi (formerly Blackwater), US military contractor CACI—which last year was found liable for torturing Iraqis at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison—electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, tech firms such as Amazon, and hoteliers Mandarin Oriental and IHG Hotels and Resorts.

Central to the plan are 10 "megaprojects," including half a dozen "smart cities," a regional logistics hub to be build over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah, a central highway named after Saudi Crown Prime Mohammed bin Salman—Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states feature prominently in the proposal as investors—large-scale solar and desalinization plants, a US data safe haven, an "Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone," and "Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands" similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai.

In addition to "massive" financial gains for private US investors, the GREAT Trust lists strategic benefits for the United States that would enable it to "strengthen" its "hold in the east Mediterranean and secure US industry access to $1.3 trillion of rare-earth minerals from the Gulf."

Earlier this year, Trump said the US would "take over" Gaza, American real estate developers would "level it out" and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" atop its ruins after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave Palestine's coastal exclave. The president called for the "voluntary" transfer of Gazans to Egypt and Jordan, both of whose leaders vehemently rejected the plan.

"Voluntary emigration" is widely considered a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given Palestinians' general unwillingness to leave their homeland.

"Voluntary emigration" at the point of a gun, as in Gaza now or in East Prussia eighty years ago; or upon receipt of a taking under eminent domain,  which is how land clearance for expressways and urban renewal projects goes, is not really voluntary.  Voluntary exchange might be a different story.  Unfortunately, the people of Gaza missed that opportunity some time ago.

I took some stick on social media for mocking Hamas as the only entity that could turn beachfront property into a slum.  "Never mind that Hamas could have avoided all the trouble by, oh, not attacking that music festival in the first place, or, once they figured out the Israelis were serious, returning all the prisoners, surrendering the ringleaders, disbanding their government, and inviting the Kuwaitis, who have some experience with beachfront property, to be trustees for Gaza."

None of those options remain.  Make of it what you will that neither the Egyptians nor the Jordanians want to take in Gaza residents.