An Alternative Plan for Gaza Resettlement
by Steven Balkin, Professor Emeritus, Roosevelt University, Email: sbalkin@roosevelt.edu
Introduction
On Feb. 4, 2025 at a White House Press Conference for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu and President Donald Trump, Trump said (starting about five minutes into the press conference),
“We should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this, and be willing to build domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza … The only reason Palestinians want to remain in Gaza is that they have no alternatives.”
Trump mentioned two countries that he claimed would take the Gazans: Egypt and Jordan. Except for followers of Trump and Natanyahu in the USA and Israel, the response has been overwhelmingly negative. It seems likely Trump was not serious about this suggestion but that it was a opening play in a bargaining game to get concessions from countries in the Middle East.
This paper is a thought experiment to suggest a different way to settle and reconstruct Gaza that would be a win-win-win-win for Palestinians-Israelis-Middle East-USA. Fours places are proposed for Palestinian Gazans to voluntarily be living permanently or temporarily while Gaza is reconstructed: Gaza itself, the West Bank territory, Detroit, Michigan (along with the City of Dearborn), and Chicago, Illinois (along with the Village suburb of Bridgeview – known as Little Palestine).
In Gaza, the UN reports, in Feb. 4, 2025, that 92% of housing is destroyed or damaged and 1.9 million people are in need of emergency shelter and essential household items. Trump’s pointing out the dire conditions in Gaza seems close to the mark.
Gazans Able To Stay In Gaza
The following are approximate housing unit and population numbers used to roughly estimate tranches of the Gazan population that could go to the four places, designated in this analysis, to settle temporarily or permanently during reconstruction. I encourage those more expert in demographics and geography to provide more accurate estimates than presented here.
The first estimate is the maximum number of Gazans that could remain comfortably and safely in present Gaza during reconstruction. The UN reports average Gazan household size to be about 5. From February 2025 UN Data, it can be inferred that 38,000 of Gaza housing units are habitable. Assuming families doubled up, that would allow for 380,000 (38,000 habitable shelter units x 10) to remain in Gaza. How to accommodate the other 1,820,000 Gazans (2,200,000 Gazans – 380,000 in existing shelter units)?
This thought experiment is based on voluntary choice. So Gazans may not choose in the population sizes for the four places as outlined here. They may choose to go in greater or lesser numbers than suggested. If that 1,820,000 were split into three, it would be 607,000 people in each of three non-Gazan places. If more than 607,000 want to go to a place, a lottery could be run to reduce the excess over 607,000, or emergency shelter units could be put in place. If less than 607,000 wanted to go to one of the three places, those unused housing slots could be made available with extra resources to encourage Gazans to choose those places. In this plan, Gazans will always have the option to not leave to anywhere and stay in Gaza during reconstruction. After Gaza is rebuilt, original Gazan residents could return to Gaza, leaving the West Bank, Detroit or Chicago, or remain permanently in those places. In either case, a Palestinian State could still be created as a two-state solution or in a three provincial Israel-Palestine confederation, as I have described elsewhere.
Gazan and Israeli Seacoasts: Riviera or Climate disaster?
Most Palestinians and Israelis have been ignoring the threats of climate change to their seacoasts. A 2023 Time Magazine article reports:
“… rising sea levels—are projected by Israel’s Environment Ministry to be as high as a meter by 2050, threatening to obliterate Israel’s famed beaches, damage its desalination plants and undermine the sewage and drainage systems of many coastal cities. In the densely populated Gaza strip, sea level rise means a loss of precious real estate as well as saltwater intrusion into an already overtaxed aquifer.”
If a partial dispersal of Gazans results in a smaller Palestinian population in Gaza, that may be mitigating the long term climate harm to them. In any case, they will not be missing out on living in an imaginary Gazan Riviera.
Gazan Reconstruction and a Palestinian State
Objections presented to me about any dispersal of Gazans is that it would destroy the possibility of a two-state solution. A Feb. 6, 2025 New York Times article by Peter Baker reports pessimistically about the possibility of a two-state solution. He writes that in Summer 2024, only 27% of Israelis back a two state solution; and similarly only 28% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, supported a two-state solution. The article also cites Jeremy Ben-Ami, President of ‘J Street’, a liberal Pro-Israel peace organization, “… it’s really hard to conceive how you would rebuild (Gaza) with two million people still there.”
My reply is that the Trump’a Gaza plan is unnecessary and a Palestinian State is still possible in the context of this paper’s resettlement plan. Instead of shifting Gazans to Egypt and Jordan or Saudi Arabia, you keep about a million Gazans in Gaza and in the nearby West Bank and you place about a million in the USA cities of Detroit and Chicago where there are allies, friendly neighborhoods of Middle East culture, and a need for population augmentation. In addition, the higher incomes earned in Detroit and and Chicago can support the long term existence of a Palestinian State just as the income of American Jewish people has supported the long term viability of Israel.
A Welcoming Detroit
Why would Detroit or Chicago each want to welcome 607,000 Palestinian Gazans as residents? I have lived in both Detroit and Chicago and I have found Palestinian people in those places to be smart, entrepreneurial, industrious, law abiding, and their cuisine to be tasty and healthy. Both Detroit and Chicago have experienced declines in population that reduce their tax base and representation in Congress. Detroit’s population peaked to 1.85 million in 1950 down to to 638,000 in 2020. There are wide swaths of empty land or land with abandoned buildings. In this digital age and in this political-economy climate where there is a strong desire to bring manufacturing industries back to the USA, job creation can occur to accommodate the new residents. It is my belief that job creation can occur to also accommodate the non-criminal newer immigrants who are already here.
Screening Out Jihadists
A smart pro-Israel colleague Ron Litchman wrote to me to me that he considers “most Gazans to be allies, enablers, supporters or sympathizers of Hamas. They may not have personally murdered or raped or pillaged, but they cheered when the savages did so in their name, because they share the jihadist obsession of destroying Israel.”
My reply is three fold. (1) A Palestinian polling center showed most Gazans in September 2024 believe Hamas’s decision to launch the October 7 massacre on Israel was incorrect. “57 percent of people surveyed in the Gaza Strip said the decision to launch the offensive was incorrect.” (2) Gazans have been political and physical victims of Hamas. Hamas is well known for killing Palestinians who express views sympathetic to co-existence with Israel and for not allowing free and fair elections in Gaza. It seems prudent, even for a person strongly sympathetic to co-existence, to overtly express alignment with Hamas, to preserve their and their families lives. (3) Any Gazans getting resources to move to a safer place, has to accept and sign the Singaporean Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act which defines the following as punishable offenses:
“Urging force or violence on the basis of religion, or against a religious group or its members; inciting feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility against a religious group; and insulting the religion or wounding the religious feelings of another person.”
It is not the signing of an agreement that changes behavior. It is that violation of this agreement is the basis for penalties, including deportation. I suggest that signing this act also be made mandatory for all residents of the USA and Israel-Palestine. Citizens violating this act can result in a fine or jail time and this offense will be entered into one’s official summary of their Criminal History Record (Rap Sheet).
A Welcoming Chicago
Chicago is in a similar situation as Detroit but less so. Chicago hit its population peak also in 1950, but at 3.6 million. Its current population is at 2.7 million, which is the same as its population 100 years ago in 1920. From 1950, Chicago experienced a 25% decline in population. Since 2014, population has declined each year. Chicago also has wide swaths of empty land or land with abandoned buildings, particularly in the South and West Sides and in the far south suburbs of Cook County. In January 2025, “S&P Global Ratings announced the downgrade of Chicago’s general obligation bond rating from ‘BBB+’ to ‘BBB.’ This rating action resolved the negative credit watch the agency had assigned to the City.” This is in the Medium Risk category and just below this is what is called “Junk Bonds”.
Conclusion
This plan for positive placement of Gazan Palestinians is inspired by President Trump’s admonition that “We should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts …” I can’t think of other places that would be more humanitarian and welcoming to Gazans than Gaza itself, the West Bank territory, Detroit with its large number of Muslims, and Chicago with its large numbers of Palestinians and openness to immigrants. Key to this plan is its voluntary nature and that Hamas and other Jihadist ideology can be screened out; and that this plan be consistent with and lead to a Palestinian State or a Provincial Israel-Palestine Confederation.
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