Gaza 2035 Vision: Netanyahu’s Vision for a “New Gaza”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convyed to the United States Congress on July 24 about his vision of a “new Gaza” that will come up once his country’s severe attack against the region is over. He talked about a “future of security, prosperity, and peace”. In May, his administration issued a thorough draft called Gaza 2035 Vision, which involved big plans for “rebuilding from nothing,” “modern designs,” and “ports, pipelines, and railways.”
President Biden’s Ambiguous Stance
US President Joe Biden has not clarified on Netanyahu’s idea, although he did mention a “major reconstruction plan for Gaza” in a speech outlining a three-step cease-fire on May 31. This was followed by a UN Security Council resolution on June 10 that supported his initiative.
The Dire Future for Palestinian People
These developments suggest a grim future for the Palestinian people. When the bloodshed finishes, the forces responsible for this slaughter will still have control over their lives. If not stopped, they will continue to devastate Palestinian lands, condemn Palestinians to poverty, and dehumanize them. However, they will also depict a harsh, dystopic future for many other populations in the region and beyond.
Gaza 2035: A Futuristic Utopia or a Dystopian Nightmare?
Netanyahu’s Gaza 2035 Vision plan may be unachievable, but that should not obscure the fact that it is representative of a powerful image of “civilisation” promoted by fintech circles and marketed to global audiences as futuristic progress. Gaza 2035 Vision reimagines the strip as “a wealthy, intensively-managed city state – think Singapore or Abu Dhabi,” or “a mega-rich clone of a globalized commercial and industrial city,” according to historian Adam Tooze. It envisions the Palestinian ghetto blossoming into the garden of an internationally managed free trade zone, giving the fruits of technology and “civilisation” to its citizens – and the world.
This is not the first time Western civilization has begun to construct and expand on top of killing fields. Yet, Israel’s “civilizational” mission in Gaza has been exceptionally violent and immoral, despite its Western supporters’ insistent apologies, dubbing it “the right to self-defense” of “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Official data currently show nearly 40,000 deaths and thousands missing, with scientific estimates putting the figure at 186,000. The ongoing carpet bombing of all of Gaza, including “safe zones,” combined with severe famine and disease, will drive these appalling figures much higher.
The Economic Motives Behind Israeli Aggression
While some have linked Israeli aggression to a vengeful pathology, there is a strong economic reason for it. This makes the unfolding genocide even more terrifying. The native Palestinian culture and life – the careful tending of the land embodied in the slow growth of the olive tree – must be eradicated to make way for an ultrafast, high-tech intensive extraction of value that bulldozes over sustainable social and environmental relations to usher in a faceless high-end urban dystopia.
As the killing continues, schemes like as Gaza 2035 Vision attempt to disguise Palestinian suffering with the appeal of “civilization,” as Netanyahu informed the US Congress. But this isn’t simply a publicity stunt. It is what political elites in Israel and others are aiming for.
Corporate Interests in Gaza’s Reconstruction
Meetings between businesses and other corporate and political bodies to explore rehabilitation megaprojects in Gaza have been place over the last nine months, despite the fact that the people is being killed. Participants include a corporation that “designs large-scale urban development projects” as well as a significant multinational consulting firm. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has openly complimented the “very valuable potential” of “waterfront property” in Gaza.
Even the extreme right wing of Netanyahu’s government seeks to manage Israel in ways that resemble Gaza 2035 Vision. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, for example, is advocating for a 2025 state budget that will impose austerity on ordinary Israelis while prioritising the high-tech and real-estate sectors.
A high-tech future demands a high-tech force to lay the groundwork. Israel, already a major exporter of military technology, has used all of its most damaging innovations to “battle test” Palestinians.The most popular of these has undoubtedly been artificial intelligence (AI), which now rules the war in Gaza. Global and US technology corporations have long been Israel’s allies in this field.
High-Tech Warfare and AI in Gaza
According to the Israeli +972 Magazine, AI has delegated the production of “targets” to an automated “factory,” outsourced human decision-making regarding the “ethics” of war action, and proposed cost-effective methods of deploying “dumb” 2000-pound bombs to annihilate entire buildings.Phone numbers and social media data have been fed into these AI weapons, which appear to determine whether a Palestinian should live or die based on which WhatsApp group they are in. Meanwhile, world media has casually noted that other militaries – both learners and possible consumers – are intently monitoring what is going on in Gaza, Israel’s open-air lab for AI urban warfare.
Technofeudalism and the Global Elite
The ongoing genocide cannot not but remind us of “technofeudalism,” a term coined by Yanis Varoufakis to define the shift of the global capitalist system into one in which power is concentrated through digital technology controlled by a small elite. In Gaza, it appears that this is already morphing into an exterminatory type of oppression, transforming weak “serfs” into an amorphous human mass that can be manipulated or destroyed at the caprice of the war tech “overlords”.
The slaughter in Gaza also calls to mind Austrian-Jewish philosopher Günther Anders’ declaration that the ultimate objective of technology is the elimination of humanity. This may be seen on a social level, as human experience becomes obsolete in the graywash of endless empty media streams. It is also present at the material level, with the use of genocidal technologies like the nuclear bomb and concentration camps, which are meant to wipe out entire communities.
Anders, as well as other scholars reflecting on the Holocaust in the decades following World War II, warned against forgetting that what happened was the result of cultural and economic forces that continued after the Shoah was over.
The Failure of International Institutions
It is now evident that we have ignored the warnings and are living through the agony of an extended genocide of industrial proportions that is rationalized as reasonable and moral – a terrible failure of the twenty-first century to uphold the “never again” promise. The United Nations and the international legal system, which are supposed to preserve fundamental human rights and dignity, are demonstrating a lack of ability to manage human affairs.
Even moderate politicians, such as EU High Representative for International Affairs Josep Borrell, have officially acknowledged this reality. In March, Borrell made the following observation: “[Gaza] is a graveyard for tens of thousands of people, and also a graveyard for many of the most valuable principles of humanitarian law.”
Chris Hedges, a former New York Times journalist, has bleakly stated that in a world besieged by the chase of profit amid a monstrous concentration of military and financial power, inflicting a climate disaster along the way, genocide will be the new norm, not the exception. “The world away from the industrialized fortresses in the Global North is keenly awake that the fate of the Palestinians is their fate,” as stated in an article he recently published.
A Call to Action for a Better Future
As the profit-churning, AI-powered war machine razes over human dignity, and as our planet’s and lives’ resources are mercilessly depleted to generate money for the financial elite, we must decide if we want Gaza 2035 to be our common future. To avert a worldwide failure and construct a better future for our children, we must take disciplined, informed, transnational, and resolute action.