Of all the things that annoyed me about Trump and his followers, there is one thing that I cannot get out of my head: their unabashed mission to make money off of other people's misery. Trump is neither a visionary nor has he contributed anything significant to the world economy. And on top of that, he has dubious personal taste, considering the hotels and restaurants he has been working on. resorts that promotes (and the makeup that it uses).
And what is left for the Palestinians after they have been killed, tortured and driven from their homes? They are left with their ability to rebuild. Let us not forget that they are excellent planners, considering the number of secret tunnels and underground shelters they have managed to maintain despite Israel's military superiority.
I imagine Trump at the international MIPIM fair in Cannes, selling a Mediterranean Riviera like the Saudis present The Line. They are media projects because they are surprising, and they fill hundreds of pages, but they are not credible. People talk about them but nobody wants to live in them. They are the pyramids of contemporary pharaohs. They always end in resounding economic failures, because a city is much more than a video: does anyone remember that advertisement for "Marina de Oro, City of Holidays"?
Trump and the Israelis will have lost the war if they cannot build the resort tourist attraction they coveted in Gaza. The announcement made with artificial intelligence is a hoot; if you haven't seen it, do so now. But it is so literal, so crazy, so short of ideas, that it opens up a range of better possibilities for rebuilding Gaza. Anything but a White Lotus for the world's billionaires.
I have always liked Arab cities, it must be a very old gene that runs through my veins from when the Mediterranean was dominated by the Arabs. Cairo, Tangier, Marrakech, Istanbul, Amman and Alexandria are cities of immense vitality. The climate favours life on the street and the simultaneity of things that happen, the mixture of noises and smells that permeate the streets has always seemed like a spectacle to me, because they are very logical within the apparent chaos and have an understandable disorder, with those minarets and domes that stylise the profiles of cities that blend in.
Gaza's buildings can be rebuilt much more quickly than souls. With much less technology than the Mossad used in the war, it is possible to have, in a few weeks, an inventory of what is still standing and what needs to be rebuilt. And doing things, actually building them instead of watching them on a screen, has therapeutic effects. If we want to help Gaza, we need to bring a constructive mentality so that the Palestinians can stay and live there. It is not difficult to have more urban ideas than Trump.
The reconstruction of Gaza can be done with incremental methods: there are virtuosos of construction with mud or bricks like Hassan Fathy in Cairo. The work of Charles Correa in India also refers to a different style, designed to build rural villages in an incremental way. There are more contemporary studios, like that of Alejandro Aravena in Chile, that have built very interesting communities without too many resources. Or the material sensitivity of Mumbai Studio… I can think of a thousand fantastic architectures that have arisen from the need to create a community for those who had nothing.
In a state devastated by war, even bureaucracy will have disappeared, opening the door to self-construction or very basic construction, based on modular buildings on which floors, porches, lofts and annexes can be added with little labour. Gaza must not be filled with skyscrapers, it must be rebuilt according to the criteria of an organic city, three or four stories high, recovering the courtyards, the organic structures of the old Arab medinas that are still preserved in the Mediterranean. Like families, Palestinian cities destroyed by war must create a new syntax, a new language of space that bears no resemblance to the banality with which Trump plays Monopoly.
There are four issues to consider in the enormous task of rebuilding Gaza: the first is to think about the ownership of the land, which cannot be sold, and even less so to foreign capital. The second has to do with the order of reconstruction: it will be necessary to start with the hospitals and schools, because the children must be protected and restored with affectionate tenderness. It cannot be ignored that the bombed ports and energy plants will have to be rebuilt, and some airport connected to allied countries will have to be built. And all this must be done with new maps, which distinguish the rubble from the vestiges, and which create the conditions for trade to flourish, which has been the basis of cities since ancient times.
Barcelona will be the World Capital of Architecture in 2026 and the post-war period in Palestine is a good topic to discuss. What is the use of knowledge if it is not to help others? I believe that the support of the international community, and in particular the European and Mediterranean, in the reconstruction of Gaza can be a flagship project to dismantle the apparent power of Trump and Netanyahu. We know how to draw better than they do.
