US appears to back plan to divide Gaza, rebuild Israeli-controlled side

The United States Department of State has backed plans to establish what it calls “alternative safe communities” (ASC) in Gaza, part of a US-Israeli plan that would appear to divide the Palestinian enclave into two.

A State Department spokesperson confirmed to Al Jazeera that it supported the ASC “approach”, saying it was “seen as the most effective way to achieve” the goal of “moving people into safe accommodations as quickly as possible”.

The ASC plan has emerged in recent weeks as part of wider discussions that would see Gaza split into a “green zone” controlled by Israel and a “red zone” controlled by the Palestinian group Hamas.

There has been little clarity over how the plan would work, and details appear to still be in flux, but the broad outline, according to reporting in The New York Times and other outlets, is that reconstruction in Gaza would take place only in areas controlled by Israel and not in those where Hamas still operates.

This means the areas where the majority of Gaza’s estimated 2.2 million residents still live, including Gaza City and central regions such as Deir el-Balah, would not see any reconstruction despite the desperate situation Palestinians there continue to live in.

“Addressing the immediate need for secure housing in Gaza [is our] central concern,” the State Department spokesperson said.

“US efforts are directed toward rebuilding in those parts of Gaza where the majority of the population currently resides,” the spokesperson added, although it was unclear if that meant that rebuilding would also occur in non-Israeli-controlled areas under the ASC plan or whether the US hoped that the majority of Gaza’s population would move to Israeli-controlled areas.

Some reports suggested that the ASCs would consist of compounds housing 20,000 or 25,000 people in container-sized units, such as those currently used in disaster relief. It is not currently clear how these compounds could be expanded to accommodate all Palestinians in Gaza.

“If they [the US and Israel] could establish a proper situation, people might move there, but it’s not feasible,” Hussein, a Palestinian from Gaza City, said of the US plans. “What are they going to establish, with what infrastructure? It would need water, electricity. It would take years.”

Who will pay?

Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza has killed more than 69,700 Palestinians. Now, more than a month after a ceasefire officially began in Gaza, there are still questions over what the next phase of the agreement will bring and when full-scale reconstruction will begin.

In the meantime, Israel continues to attack periodically, killing at least 347 people since the ceasefire began on October 10.

For those still alive, life is incredibly difficult. At least 1.9 million people in Gaza are displaced. Many of them have had to flee multiple times. Ninety-two percent of Gaza’s housing stock has been damaged or reduced to rubble, leaving hundreds of thousands of people living in tents, a particularly precarious situation as winter approaches.

The destruction of Gaza’s buildings has come as a result of Israeli air strikes and shelling as well as a systematic campaign to deliberately demolish vast swaths of the territory.

Officials quoted in The New York Times said the first ASC compound was still months away from completion. Israeli soldiers were expected to begin clearing an area around what remains of Rafah in the south this week. But that work could be delayed if tunnels, unexploded ordnance or human remains are encountered.

Two people involved in the project estimated that the cost for just the initial compound could reach tens of millions of dollars. Overall, the cost of reconstructing Gaza is expected to come to at least $70bn and take several decades. Where the funding for the reconstruction will come from is unclear.

Who will pay for the proposed ASCs is equally ambiguous. The administration of US President Donald Trump is reported to have ruled out funding their construction while Israeli politicians have yet to confirm their final position.

The US State Department spokesperson did not comment on the funding, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Engineering a new Gaza

While few Palestinians currently live in Gaza’s Israeli-controlled zone, US hopes are understood to rest on the idea that development, security and presumably access to medical care and welfare would be enough to draw people from other areas of Gaza.

But complicating US ambitions is that access to the “green zone” is heavily restricted for Palestinians, a situation that is likely to continue going forward.

According to The New York Times, Israeli security services are likely to conduct background checks on Palestinians seeking shelter in the new compounds, giving Israel a veto over who will be allowed in.

The outlet added that European diplomats have expressed concern that the eventual criteria could exclude large numbers of Palestinians, including civil servants, such as police and medical staff, who have worked under Hamas’s 18-year administration of the enclave as well as their family members.

And aid agencies said the idea of providing aid only to people in certain areas to the exclusion of others goes against humanitarian principles.

“We deliver aid where people are,” said Tamara Alrifai, the director of external relations for the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA. “We don’t provide services where we’d like people to be. That goes against the entire philosophy of aid and development.”

“This is about delivering the services people need to where the people are, not creating an artificial village and imposing what services you think people need onto them,” she said.

Division, partition and shrunken space

Arab and European officials as well as agencies such as Refugees International have expressed concern that the division of Gaza into red and green zones may pave the way to permanent partition. The idea has also drawn comparisons to the occupations of Baghdad and Kabul, where green zones became effective Western enclaves.

However, the suggestion of dividing Gaza is not entirely new. Speaking in April, Netanyahu spoke of plans to “divide up” Gaza by building a new Israel-controlled security corridor between Rafah and Khan Younis, suggesting Israel was preparing to separate the two cities.

As recently as September, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich characterised Gaza as a “real estate bonanza”, telling an audience that he was already in negotiations with the Americans on how to divide up the enclave after the war.

Smotrich and other Israeli settler leaders have consistently called for Israel to create illegal settlements for Jewish Israelis in Gaza and essentially force the Palestinian population out in what would amount to ethnic cleansing.

“How can you divide it?” Yossi Mekelberg of Chatham House asked rhetorically. “You can’t squeeze 2 million people into a space even smaller than that which they’re already in.”

“Imposing an Israeli or American solution onto Gaza just isn’t going to work. If you’re going to even try to achieve something lasting, you need to begin with an understanding of Gaza’s history, culture and trauma,” Mekelberg added. “Palestinians need to be part of any settlement, or it’s never going to be stable.”

In Gaza, news of US and Israeli plans for the future of Palestinians is doing little to reassure a population battered and displaced after two years of Israeli assaults.

“No one has talked to us. No one has thought about what people here need,” Hussein said. “What about people’s homes and land? Do they just give them up to go and live in a container?”