Gaza could have been a Singapore/Dubai if not for Hamas.

When did Palestinians say they wanted their land to be like Singapore or Dubai? This framing reflects a colonial fantasy that treats Palestine as a development project to be redesigned according to external models. Palestinians struggle for their right to self-determination: to live free from colonization, occupation, and blockade, with full sovereignty over their land and resources, and to shape their future according to their own traditions, lived experiences, and collective identity.

The recent Trump vision to turn Gaza into the "Riviera of the Middle East,"developed through the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation (GREAT) Trust, follows the same colonial logic. It portrays Palestinians as the obstacle to prosperity, makes their ethnic cleansing and urbicide the preconditions for development, while replacing Palestinian self-determination with externally imposed Israeli-US colonial rule and economic exploitation. Turning Gaza into luxury real estate, tourist resorts, and a high-tech hub is not reconstruction. It is settler colonialism.

This claim ignores history. For thousands of years, Gaza was a center of trade, agriculture, and cultural life. The Nakba of 1948 brought its economy to collapse through the mass expulsion of Palestinians into the Strip, fragmentation from the rest of Palestine, and the loss of land and trade routes. After 1967, Israeli occupation seized control of Gaza's land, borders, movement, and resources, blocking any independent development. Hamas did not create these conditions. It emerged in 1987 in response to them.

Even before the genocide, Israel's blockade and repeated military offensives since 2007 had already devastated Gaza's economy. According to the UN, by 2022, around 80% of Gaza's population depended on humanitarian aid, 45% of the workforce was unemployed, and around 65% lived in poverty. The genocide accelerated this process into economic collapse. Within just the first three months, humanitarian aid became a necessity for almost the entire population, unemployment rose to nearly 80%, poverty to 96%, and Gaza's GDP fell by more than 80%.

This claim dehumanizes Palestinians by implying they are inherently incapable of development, rather than recognizing the colonial conditions shaping their reality. Despite prolonged occupation, blockade, and repeated military offensives, culminating in the ongoing genocide, Palestinians in Gaza have continued to rebuild homes, hospitals, universities, schools, farms, and cultural institutions. Gaza's reality reflects structural colonial constraints, not a lack of Palestinian capacity, intellect, determination, or creativity.