Riviera or statehood: the future of Gaza

0:00Last week, there was a closed-door meeting in the White House to discuss what should happen when the war in Gaza ends. We don't know much about the meeting, but we do know that the American president was there, the former British prime minister Tony Blair was there, and of course, Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff. It's a very comprehensive plan we're putting together on the next day that I think many people are going to be, they're going to see how robust it is and how well-meaning it is. And it reflects President Trump's humanitarian motives here. And then just a couple of days ago, new details emerged, implying that they were resurrecting a plan that had fallen out of the headlines.

0:45According to a new Washington Post report, the Trump administration and international partners want to build, quote, the Riviera of the Middle East. A 38-page plan to move all 2 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Transforming the enclave into a tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub. Putting the U.S. in direct conflict with the rest of the Western world.

1:13From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redman. And I'm Asma Khalid. Today on The Global Story, two competing visions for the future in Gaza and where, realistically, this war ends.

1:32I think I might have seen Mr. Bowen walk past the window. Oh, really? There's Mr. Bowen. Hello. Hello. Asma, very nice to meet you. My pleasure. Hi, Jeremy. I'm Tristan. Jeremy Bowen is the international editor of the BBC, and there's a reason why we're having him as our first guest. He's a total legend here. He's covered almost every major conflict in the world for the last 40 years, particularly in the Middle East. And someone on our team actually described him as kind of like a David Attenborough of news.

2:03Jeremy Bowen:Well, that's a rare honor, and I'm very happy and pleased to have been invited. Are you nervous to be on the first episode of The Global Story? I'm excited. Do you have any advice for us? Keep it interesting. Keep it accurate. If you keep to those rules, you'll be okay. All right, we'll try. We'll try our best. So we want to begin by having you walk us through these two competing visions. And I want to start with the Americans. What is your understanding of what the Trump administration wants to see happen in Gaza? There are clues. There's no hard plan, but there is talk that isn't really going away about Donald Trump's so-called Riviera plan.

2:44And the Riviera plan was an idea that surfaced earlier on this year. I remember. February.

2:53Jeremy Bowen:So back in February, I just left Jerusalem actually after a three, four week reporting stint there. And I was on my way to Ukraine, which Donald Trump was about to turn his attentions to with that notorious meeting with Zelensky in the Oval Office. But an earlier meeting, beginning of February in the Oval Office, was with Netanyahu. Yes, his first invited visitor to the White House. Today I'm delighted to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back to the White House. Which Netanyahu is very, very pleased about. I'm honoured that you invited me to be the first foreign leader to visit the White House in your second term.

3:32You are the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House. It was a mixed meeting for Netanyahu because he didn't like talk of negotiations with Iran.

3:44Jeremy Bowen:But then Trump came out with this idea. I envision the world, people living there, the world's people. I think you'll make that into an international, unbelievable place. I think the potential in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable. That the U.S. could take over. You know, he's an experienced real estate developer. And I don't want to be cute. I don't want to be a wise guy. but the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so magnificent. They were light on detail about the way it was, but it came actually after, almost a year before that, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who's also in the real estate business and had been his main advisor in his first term, Trump's main advisor, he said then, he talked about the extraordinary potential in a real estate sense of the Gaza coastline.

4:40In Gaza's waterfront property, it could be very valuable to, if people would focus on kind of building up, you know, livelihoods. You think about all the money that's gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions. If that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done?

4:54Jeremy Bowen:The stretch of the Mediterranean, nearly 30 miles long, sandy beaches, beautiful weather. You can imagine what it could become. Are people in Israel seriously talking about that possibility, about hosting Gazan refugees in what is considered, quote unquote, Israel proper? I don't know. But that would be something you would try to work on. I'm sitting in Miami Beach right now and I'm looking at this situation and I'm just thinking what would I do if I was there. Can you remember what your reaction was when you first heard about this plan? I thought it would really excite the Israeli hard right.

5:30Jeremy Bowen:How so? Well, because in the previous months I'd done a fair amount of reporting with the settlers who are now in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank. I've been talking to these people who were really pushing, saying, we need to get back into Gaza and we have support in the government. We need to be back in there. So even in Israel, most people thought this is just not going to happen. But then when you hear the president of the United States talking about scenarios where the Palestinians get moved out, that was always going to send. So my first thought was, wow, the Israeli hard right, they're going to love this and they're going to run with it.

6:13I know initially it sounded like the vision of this plan would expel all the Palestinians, which obviously runs counter to all sorts of regulations around international law. But then you heard the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who tried to walk back aspects of this plan and say, no, the sort of long-term resettlement of Palestinians is not part of it. What is your understanding of where the reality of this American plan stands at this moment?

6:40Jeremy Bowen:Well, the answer is I don't know because there are different signals that come out. But what we've seen in the last few days is a leak of a document to the Washington Post, a 38-page dossier where they go into some detail about the way that this is going to work with over a 10-year period, Palestinians being given a small amount of money to try and encourage them to leave. The idea is that, first of all, there will be an encouragement of voluntary in very large, I'd say inverted commas, voluntary emigration out of Gaza, because, you know, the argument is it's hardly voluntary if you flatten the place, destroy their homes and kill more than 60 ,000 people.

7:14Jeremy Bowen:That probably counts more as fleeing. The report in the Washington Post said that there would be incentives for people to leave. They would get a cash payment. I think $5 ,000 was mentioned. $5 ,000? Yeah, it's not a great deal, is it? They would also go maybe get some support with rent. There would be free food for a year. I don't know quite how they do that. Maybe it would be vouchers in the places they were going to. Property owners would be given some sort of digital tag, which would give them the right in the future to get an apartment in one of the new developments. Those Palestinians who decided that they would stay, according to these reports, while this redevelopment goes on, would stay in a secured area, a supervised area, which to my mind sounds a bit like an internment camp.

8:10Jeremy Bowen:I mean, various incentives for them to either get out or to live very restricted lives inside Gaza for at least 10 years while this huge development took place. Look, this is not anointed, this is not certified White House policy, but it appears to be the kind of thing that they are talking about at the moment.

8:35Jeremy Bowen:The reason why removing Palestinians is such a big deal is their history. You go back to 1948, to what they call the Nakba, the catastrophe, the establishment of Israeli independence in the war, its war of independence in 1948. More than 700 ,000 Palestinians became refugees. They were either forced out or they fled. And they have never been allowed back, with a few tiny exceptions. They have never been allowed back. So the lesson that Palestinians have taken from their history is that if you leave, you don't get to come home. That's not going to happen, whatever people say.

9:18At this point, these are just kind of clues as to what the Trump administration might be proposing for the region and what it wants for Gaza, the whole Gaza-Riviera thing. But how possible is it that this might actually happen?

9:35Jeremy Bowen:My instinct is that the full-fat Riviera plan cannot happen because Donald Trump wants to retain good relations with Saudi Arabia. I cannot see a situation in which particularly the Saudis, particularly the crown prince, the de facto ruler of the country, Mohammed bin Salman, MBS. I don't see how he could ever accept anything like this. And that's something that really matters, I think, to Trump. So my instinct is that it will remain pie in the sky. But the idea doesn't go away. It keeps popping up again. So it appears to exist in some chamber of Donald Trump's mind. So since he's the president of the United States, you've got to continue to take a version of it, perhaps, seriously as a possibility.

10:31Coming up next, a radically different vision for the future of Gaza has emerged from leaders in Europe. It's a vision that is likely to collide with the Americans later this month in New York.

10:57So until now, we've been talking about what we know about the American vision for post-war Gaza. But there's a totally different approach because several of America's allies have been coalescing around a different plan. So next week, international diplomats start arriving in New York for the UN General Assembly. And at this meeting, some of these countries intend to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state for the first time. I wonder if you can just walk me through how this other approach has come about.

11:29Jeremy Bowen:The French were talking to the British for a long time earlier this year. Lots of negotiations. I speak to diplomats. Both sides are actually blaming the other for moving a bit too slowly. A warm welcome to Newsday. The French moved first. In a major diplomatic development, France says it will officially recognise Palestine as a state, becoming the first G7 country to do so. putting pressure on the Brits, who then followed up pretty soon afterwards. It is with the hand of history on our shoulders that His Majesty's government therefore intends to recognise the state of Palestine when the UN General Assembly gathers in September here in New York.

12:20Canada intends to recognise the state of Palestine. at the 80th session of the United Nations. La Belgique va reconnaître publiquement urbi et urbi l 'état de Palestine. Today I can confirm that at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September, Australia will recognize the state of Palestine. OK, so we have Canada, Australia, France and the UK promising to recognize Palestine as a state in September. But what does it even mean to recognize Palestine as a state right now?

12:56Jeremy Bowen:On one level, it means nothing. Because there is no Palestinian state. There's no prospect of a Palestinian state. They haven't specified the borders of a future Palestinian state. But on another level, it's really significant because it's symbolic. Politics, diplomacy is often a game of symbols. And I think you can tell the significance, and I think it is significant, because of the vehemence of the Israeli and also the American reaction. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sakhir Starmer had rewarded Hamas's monstrous terrorism and punished its victims. European countries and Australia.

13:36Marching into that rabbit hole and buy this canard is disappointing. And I think it's actually shameful. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also rejected Macron's plan, calling it a reckless decision. They're actually hurting the cause. They're not helping because, A, their statement isn't going to change anything other than it encourages and rewards Hamas, who now has every reason in the world not to agree to cease fire. When we first started talking about doing this episode, I was struck by how different the Brits on our team and the Americans on our team, because we are a transatlantic production team here, how we interpreted what this unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state means.

14:16because I've covered American politics for years. There is no world in which a Republican or a Democratic administration would unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. You know, I mean, the talking point has always been peace first. And then maybe one day in the future, they'll talk about a Palestinian state. And so I guess I'm wondering, you know, what does any of this means if ultimately the U.S. holds all the power? And this has really been out of the question in the U.S.

14:43Jeremy Bowen:Well, in a way, the U.S. almost has veto power over the whole process. They've completely absorbed Israel's position. There's very hard to see any daylight between them. You look at the fact now that not only has the State Department announced that the Palestinian delegation will not be given visas to come to the General Assembly, they've also said now, I think, that individuals who have Palestinian passports and apply using their Palestinian papers would not get visas either. OK, so just to pause and explain that a bit. Last Friday, the U.S. State Department announced it would deny visas for a number of Palestinian officials ahead of the assembly meeting.

15:22A whole bunch of officials, including, importantly, the president of the Palestinian Authority, which means that none of those officials can actually attend these U.N. meetings.

15:33Jeremy Bowen:And one of the major reasons for this is because they are pushing for self-determination, i.e. the two-state solution. It's now for the Trump administration and the Marco Rubio State Department a reason to deny someone a visa to enter the United States. Can I just ask you a procedural question? I recall in years past, you'd have someone like the former president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who came to the UN General Assembly, even though he was like persona non grata, and the U.S. did not have at all a friendly relationship with him. I don't fully understand. I thought that the UN had some sort of like special recognition.

16:11Jeremy Bowen:There was an agreement, a headquarters agreement that was signed back when I think was signed sometime in the early 50s or maybe even the late 40s when the decision was taken to make the permanent home of the United Nations in New York. and the idea was was that even if you didn't like countries you'd give them a visa to come in you know at the height of the cold war the general secretary of the communist party of the soviet union nik khrushchev was there using his shoe to bash on the podium at meetings and and having a big go at the west and gaddafi the same gaddafi i remember the big i've covered quite a lot of uh general assemblies and i remember the year that gaddafi came there was a great big row about where he pitches tent.

16:54Jeremy Bowen:I think in the end he found an estate in New Jersey. I actually thought this had never happened before, but then I was talking to my wife about this episode and she brought up this thing that in 1988, Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was actually prevented from going to New York for the UN General Assembly by the Reagan administration who revoked his visa saying that he had links to terrorism in some way. And in fact, the UN moved its meeting to Geneva in order to allow Yasser Arafat to attend. So it's not totally unprecedented, but it's obviously rare. What do you think they're trying to achieve by barring Palestinians from attending now?

17:36Jeremy Bowen:They want to put a lot of pressure on the Palestinians to tell the Palestinian Authority, which is the rival Palestinian organization to Hamas and was initially designed to be the building blocks of a state, which it has not become. Netanyahu said repeatedly they will have no part in any future in Gaza. The Arab states in their plans for the future, European countries as well, have all said it has to include the PA. Netanyahu is adamantly against it, And I think that he seems to have the ear of Donald Trump. Jeremy, when we get to the UN General Assembly later in September and France, the UK, Canada and Australia recognize a Palestinian state, what happens?

18:25Good question.

18:28Jeremy Bowen:On the face of it, in terms of what goes on, if anything, an uptick in the pace of the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Can you explain why one would follow the other? Because they have used phrases, the Israeli government and the settler movement have used phrases along the lines of, you know, a correct Zionist response to these things is to expand the range of settlements.

18:56If you go through the West Bank, there are so many more Jewish settlements.

19:02Jeremy Bowen:Many more have been authorized.

19:09Jeremy Bowen:Members of the current Israeli cabinet have used phrases like, we're doing this to bury the prospect of a Palestinian state.

19:19Jeremy Bowen:Israel Katz, Defense Minister, Betzal El Smotrich. They showed on a map where they were going to start new settlements, and they explicitly said, we have positioned these settlements to make it as hard as we can for a Palestinian state to emerge.

19:42You're saying that when France, Canada, Australia and the UK go to New York and recognize Palestinian statehood, that in fact it will have the opposite effect on the ground than the one which is intended by the leaders of those countries. So instead of encouraging more aid into Gaza, more moves towards self-determination for Palestinians, it will actually do the opposite.

20:08Jeremy Bowen:Well, that would be the standard Israeli response would be to push back very hard. However, I think that in the medium to longer term, Israel's increasing isolation from countries that have been steadfast allies. Britain is a steadfast ally, has been, of Israel throughout its history. the fact that they are turning against core policies of the Israeli government that doesn't speak to a happy future for Israel's position as a country that wants to be viewed normally. A small but vocal number of Israelis I should say have argued that the country is is lurching towards becoming a pariah state because of the way it's conducted the war.