The Israeli peace movement Peace Now reports that Israel has just approved the annexation of a 13 square kilometer area in the West Bank – the largest single Israeli occupation in three decades.
Palestinians living in the area will no longer be allowed to use the land, which will now be classified as the property of the Israeli state.
The Netanyahu government, backed by far-right Zionist parties such as the Religious Zionist Party and Jewish Power, has recently stepped up annexations and has now occupied a total of nearly 24 square kilometers of land in the area since the beginning of 2024.
The number of Israeli settlements has also increased since last fall, and although Gaza has been hardest hit by the war, conflicts have also flared up in the West Bank.
The Palestinian territories are already home to a large number of Israeli settlements, including nearly half a million Israelis. The international community, including the EU, has condemned the settlements and considers them illegal under international law.
The land now seized is in the Jordan Valley, northeast of Ramallah, and will be leased to Israeli citizens, while private Palestinian ownership is prohibited, Qatar’s Al Jazeera reports.
“Fighting against Israeli interests”
Land theft and illegal Israeli settlements are widely seen as one of the biggest obstacles to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and Peace Now says a two-state solution must become a reality.
“Today, it is clear to everyone that this conflict cannot be resolved without a political settlement that establishes a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Still, the Israeli government chooses to actually make it difficult and distance us from the possibility of peace and stopping the bloodshed”, they wrote in a statement.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party) has promised to “flood” the West Bank with one million new Israeli settlers.
“Netanyahu and Smotrich are determined to fight against the entire world and against the interests of the people of Israel for the benefit of a handful of settlers who receive thousands of dunams as if there were no political conflict to resolve or war to end”,Peace Now added.
In addition to the 500,000 Israeli settlers, some three million Palestinians live in the West Bank. They are effectively under Israeli military rule, with daily raids and mass arrests, nearly 10,000 Palestinians arrested since October, and at least 553 killed.
We don’t have a billionaire owner, and our unique reader-funded model keeps us free from political or corporate influence. This means we can fearlessly report the facts and shine a light on the misdeeds of those in power.
Consider a donation to keep our independent journalism running…
Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has previously praised Jewish mass murderers and terrorists, is seen as perhaps the most controversial figure in the Netanyahu government.
The far-right Jewish Power party left Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition in January in protest against the ceasefire and hostage agreement with Hamas.
However, after Israel resumed bombing Gaza, the party’s leader Itamar Ben-Gvir announced that it would return to government.
According to Palestinian authorities, at least 400 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza overnight on Tuesday – and more than 1,000 people were injured.
Many of those killed were women and children, but Benjamin Netanyahu’s staff claimed the attacks targeted Hamas and were “a consequence of Hamas’ repeated refusal to release our hostages and its rejection of all proposals made to it by US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and the mediators”.
The resumption of bombing is seen as a very positive and necessary step by Jewish Power, and in a statement Ben-Gvir said the party “welcomes the return of the State of Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to intense fighting”.
“As we said in recent months, when we withdrew [from the government], Israel must return to fighting in Gaza. This is the right, moral, ethical and most justified step, in order to destroy the Hamas terrorist organization and bring back our hostages. We must not accept the existence of the Hamas organization and it must be destroyed”, he continues.
Clearing Gaza of Palestinians
Until January this year, Ben-Gvir was the minister responsible for Israel’s national security and has long been a highly criticized figure, not only internationally, but also at home in Israel, where criticism of the Netanyahu government is growing and the prime minister himself is accused of corruption-related crimes.
The criticism of Ben-Gvir stems partly from the party leader’s past open praise of Jewish terrorists and mass murderers, but also from his promotion during the invasion of Gaza of what analysts consider to be large-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the area.
Although the radical Zionist publicly states that Israel should encourage Palestinians to “voluntarily” leave the area, the UN and human rights organizations argue that it is in fact a genocide to open the way for further Israeli occupation and more Jewish settlements.
In the past, Itamar Ben-Gvir has also attracted attention for his very hostile attitude towards Christians, defending Orthodox Jews who spit on Christians and calling the practice an “ancient Jewish custom”.
As the Trump administration halts military aid to Ukraine and seeks peace between Moscow and Kiev, deliveries of heavy bombs to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel continue.
Recently, a massive arms sale of nearly $3 billion to Tel Aviv was approved, bypassing normal congressional oversight on the grounds that the deal was allegedly necessary for US security interests.
It includes 35,500 MK 84 and BLU-117 heavy bombs and 4,000 Predator warheads – the same kind of bombs previously used by the Israeli military to devastate Gaza.
The bombs are valued at around $2 billion. In addition to these bombs, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also approved other munitions sales worth just over $675 million and bulldozers worth just under $300 million.
Secretary Rubio “has determined and provided detailed justification that an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale to the Government of Israel of the above defense articles and defense services in the national security interests of the United States, thereby waiving the Congressional review requirements the State Department writes.
It states that the US is “deeply committed to Israel’s security” and argues that it is “vital” to US national interests to continue supplying weapons and other bombs.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability. This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives, the ministry further writes. Deliveries are scheduled to begin next year.
Tens of thousands of women and children killed
Delivering weapons and bombs to Israel is considered highly controversial in many parts of the world – not least because many observers believe that Israel’s war crimes and abuses in Gaza are of such magnitude that it is reasonable to speak of an ongoing genocide.
Several Israeli officials have also expressed joy and pride that large parts of the Palestinian territory are now in ruins and confirmed that the goal is to ethnically cleanse the area.
The exact number of Palestinian lives lost so far is difficult to ascertain, as the UN and other international organizations’ access and work in the area is currently limited. However, according to local authorities, nearly 50,000 people have been killed and more than 110,000 injured, with the vast majority of the remaining population displaced. Most of these victims are women and children.
According to some analysts, the real death toll is likely to be much higher than this, while it is difficult to estimate the number of people who have died from starvation, disease and other causes indirectly linked to Israel’s bombing.
Based on the concept of "peace through development", where there is no peace without development and no development without peace, and where the two issues must go in parallel, Hussein Askary writes in a guest analysis.
Published 28 February 2025
Schematic description of the Oasis Plan with water (blue) and transportation project (red). To the right: infrastructure map - West Asia connectivity plan.
The absurd statements made by U.S. President Donald Trump on relocating the Palestinians from Gaza, followed by the insults directed by Benjamin Netanyahu to some important Arab countries, have opened a window of opportunity for the Arab countries and the Global South to put forward an alternative plan that is realistic, humanitarian, and compatible with international law to save the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, resolve the Palestinian issue, and establish peace and development in the West Asian region (erroneously called the Middle East).
But this requires guarantees and cooperation from international powers, most importantly the US Administration, but not alone. China, Russia, the BRICS countries, that were joined this year by Egypt, the UAE, Iran and Ethiopia (and potentially Indonesia), and many other countries in the Global South have risen economically, militarily and politically today.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently recognized that the era of unipolarity is over and has been replaced by an era of multipolarity. This historical fact must be exploited by Arab countries, not to play the East against the East, but to build bridges through Arab countries between them.
First, it is imperative to uphold the two-state solution and the right of the Palestinian people to establish their own state with East Jerusalem as its capital on Palestinian lands in accordance with UN Resolution 242 of 1967 and the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. However, for this state to be sustainable, there must be an economic policy for reconstruction and development and to compensate the Palestinian people and their younger generations for the tragedies and horrors they have faced so far.
The gates of humanitarian relief must be opened immediately to prevent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza from dying of hunger, immunodeficiency and infectious diseases due to water contamination and lack of sanitation and health care.
Perhaps this is what the extremist Israeli government is counting on to drive the Palestinian people out of Gaza voluntarily. We must remember what happened in Iraq after Desert Storm in 1991, where nearly one million Iraqis, half of them children, were killed not by Anglo-American bombing, but by the consequences of the destruction of basic infrastructure and the economic blockade that led to malnutrition and the spread of diseases.
Schematic description of the Oasis Plan with water (blue) and transportation project (red).
The Oasis Plan
As for the long-term plan, we are pleased with the statements made by the Egyptian government that there are two plans that will be discussed with the Arab countries before the upcoming summit at the end of this month.
While we do not know the details of these plans, we would like to put forward a set of ideas within what we call the “Oasis Plan”, an idea launched by the late American economist Lyndon LaRouche in the 1970s and based on the concept of “peace through development”, where there is no peace without development and no development without peace, and where the two issues must go in parallel.
This is what did not happen in the Oslo Agreement, as the economic decisions in Annexes III and IV were neglected, albeit insufficient, and the focus was on political solutions only. This is what prompted LaRouche to predict the failure of the Oslo Accord and to warn of the role of the Israeli extreme right and its supporters from the Christian Zionist movements in the United States and Britain in destroying any foundations for peace and assassinating and imprisoning its advocates on both sides.
The Oasis Plan is to address the issues of water shortage and desertification in the region, the lack of modern basic infrastructure for development, and the lack of agricultural and industrial capabilities despite the existence of natural resources, geographical location, financial and human resources in the region but are unevenly distributed.
The plan sees the issue of reconstruction in Gaza, Palestine, and the entire region (especially Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen) in a larger context. It is not possible to find solutions to local issues whose causes are global.
The plan in its new form developed by this author and his colleagues at the Schiller Institute in the last two years evolves in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative or the New Silk Road and the connectivity of West Asia’s infrastructure and its utilization as a bridge between Asia, Europe and Africa on the one hand and the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean on the other.
This is done by building development corridors throughout the region consisting mainly of transportation lines such as railways, highways, water, electric power, oil and gas pipelines, and building new agricultural and industrial zones and cities on both sides of these development corridors, which will extend to Palestine (from Jordan to the West Bank, to Gaza, to the Mediterranean Sea, and from there to Egypt).
Infrastructure map: West Asia connectivity plan.
Water and agriculture
The plan first aims to solve the issue of water shortage, underdeveloped agriculture and desertification. The amount of water naturally available in this part of the region, especially the Golan Hights, South Lebanon, and the West Bank, most of which is appropriated by Israel, cannot be relied upon, even if it were hypothetically divided fairly. There is a need throughout the region to increase the amount of water available exponentially, and this can only be done through seawater desalination.
There are two major projects for desalination:
First: Building two canals to the Dead Sea, one from the Red Sea and the other from the Mediterranean. The purpose of these two canals is not for maritime transportation, as is rumored, and they can be replaced by large diameter pipes. Rather, their purpose is to take advantage of the huge difference in elevation between the Red and Mediterranean Seas on the one hand and the Dead Sea on the other. The Dead Sea is four hundred meters below sea level. The rapid flow of water in the two channels sloping towards the Dead Sea can be used to generate energy for desalination and other uses.
Second: In the future, nuclear plants with small modular reactors could be built to desalinate water and produce electricity. Similar plants powered by either natural gas or nuclear power should be built in the future on the Mediterranean coast and along the Suez Canal as well.
Agriculture must be significantly developed, using modern irrigation and seed development techniques in the Palestinian territories and in neighboring Arab countries to achieve food security and economic, political, and stability because a large part of the Arab countries’ resources are wasted on importing foodstuffs.
Social and political shocks occur in Arab countries whenever there is a global crisis that leads to a rise in food prices, as happened in 2008 and 2009 and after the outbreak of the Ukraine war in 2022. Therefore, the cultivation and afforestation of dry and desert areas must be expanded throughout the Arab region.
Industries
Lyndon LaRouche proposed at an international conference on oil and gas in global politics in Abu Dhabi in May 2002 that oil-producing countries should build nuclear power plants both for water desalination and also to use their oil and gas resources for petrochemical, chemical and other industries that increase the added value of crude oil and gas exponentially.
A few years later, the UAE launched its own peaceful nuclear program and completed the construction of four large-scale nuclear reactors in cooperation with South Korea last year. Egypt is currently building the Dabaa nuclear plant in cooperation with Russia.
China’s industrial and technological progress has also enabled it to localize some advanced industries in Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. All Arab countries should build industrial parks and special economic zones, in addition to establishing industries in Gaza and the West Bank, taking advantage of their geographical location, availability of raw materials and labor, and proximity to markets.
The construction of a world-class port in Gaza, an airport, and rail and metro line should be implemented. The tunnel systems that were used for war fighting can be replaced by a metro system in time of peace.
Financing
We cannot rely solely on foreign aid to sustain the economic situation of the Palestinian people and their future state. The Oasis Plan includes the establishment of an Arab or regional development bank modeled after the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) with a capital of $100 billion.
The Arab countries should collectively establish such a bank. Its purpose would be not only to issue low-interest, long-term credits to finance basic infrastructure projects throughout the region, especially in Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, but also to provide financial leverage for national development banks to be established, such as the Palestinian Development Bank (which was envisioned in the Oslo Accords but has not been established).
National banks would be able to finance local projects for housing, agriculture and industry. This would save poor Arab countries and the Palestinian people from relying on foreign aid with strings attached including political concessions.
Funding could in addition be obtained from the AIIB and through bilateral “oil-for-construction” and “oil-for-technology” agreements, where a small portion of the region’s oil and gas exports (5% to 10%) could be used to finance the proposed Arab Development Bank and to obtain bilateral credits from oil and gas importing countries such as China, Japan, Korea, India, and European countries and utilize these credits in infrastructure, industry, and agriculture projects. We have explained this in detail in a previous article.
How can Gaza be rebuilt without relocating its population?
There are many simple solutions, but they need good organization and joint funding. For example, Asian countries, including China, have the capacity to manufacture small prefabricated mobile houses the size of a typical shipping container cheaply and quickly.
The Palestinian people in Gaza cannot continue to live in tents without experiencing all sorts of health, psychological and social issues. Communal sanitation facilities could be built around clusters of such housing along Gaza’s coastline, supplied with water, electricity and sewage treatment via floating power and desalination plants that are available in many parts of the world or can be built quickly. Likewise, field hospitals and schools must be built.
The Oasis Plan is a plan that, although it is regionally comprehensive and needs global consensus, is capable of finding solutions to even local and national issues. Its details can be expanded upon in collaboration with local planners and engineers to adapt it to the local situation of each region and country.
Our purpose in proposing the Oasis Plan is not to design precise policies for each country, but to develop a general but scientific and conceptual framework that reflects the economic, technical and political developments in today’s new world.
Hussein Askary Vice-Chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden
US President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated video the other day that purports to show Trump’s vision for the future of Gaza.The video was initially posted on Trump’s social media platform Truth Social and has attracted widespread attention and criticism.
The 33-second video begins with images of a destroyed Gaza, followed by the text “Gaza 2025” and “What’s next?”. The scene then transforms into a luxury resort with skyscrapers, beaches and people partying.
In the background, a song is heard saying: “Donald’s coming to set you free, bringing the light for all to see, no more tunnels, no more fear, Trump Gaza is finally here, Trump Gaza’s shining bright, golden future, a brand new light, feast and dance, the deal is done, Trump Gaza number one”.
Some of the most eye-catching features include:
A large gold statue of Trump
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing by a pool
The AI-generated video comes after Trump repeatedly suggested that the US should take over Gaza and turn the area into the “Riviera of the Middle East“. The proposal has faced strong criticism from the Arab world and other nations, who point out that it appears to be effectively completing the ethnic cleansing of the area.
“We won’t be lured by a few statues and money, leave us alone and let us rebuild our homes by ourselves”, a 20-year-old Gaza resident commented on the video.
Unsurprisingly, Gaza’s Hamas-led government media office has also strongly criticized the move. Ismail Al-Thawabtah, Director General of Gaza, described the content as “degrading ‘ and said it reflects a “deeply rooted racist colonial mindset”.
The origin of the video is currently unclear and Donald Trump has not commented further at the time of writing. The incident has also sparked debate about the use of AI-generated content in political communication, including its potential implications for international relations.
