Rebuilding Gaza is one of the greatest city-making tasks in modern history—perhaps all history. Roughly 60 million tons of rubble bestrews an area as large as a mid-sized American city. Haaretz reported in July 2025 that over 70 percent of buildings have been leveled, a degree of destruction comparable to that in Dresden after its firebombing in World War II. And Gaza faces challenges that Dresden did not, including a festering, unresolved conflict and fragmented political authority.

These challenges have not stopped various governments and organizations from rolling out plans for rebuilding the enclave, and rightly so. As it stands, the Gaza Strip is borderline unlivable. But unfortunately, all the rebuilding proposals released thus far share the same fatal flaws: they were devised by central planners armed with abstract ideas about how best to organize the strip rather than informed by what Palestinians actually want and need.

Egyptian officials, for instance, put forth a master plan for the strip that is both sweeping and inflexible—with fixed “tourist villages,” places for “industrial craft,” and high-density residential areas, all divided into distinct zones. This top-down scheme, seemingly designed with minimal local input, is unlikely to be terribly helpful to the roughly two million Palestinians who live in Gaza now or to its future residents. Similarly, in January 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and part-time envoy, Jared Kushner, presented the broad outlines of a master plan to turn Gaza into both a tourist destination and a place where locals can thrive. But his proposal, like the Egyptian one, appears to be the product of people who do not live on the ground and don’t have to contend with the enclave’s actual conditions. Somewhat better was the “Phoenix Plan” put forward by a self-described “voluntary, interdisciplinary consortium” of Palestinian experts. It is centered more on Palestinian property rights, local identity, and community action. Yet it is still regulation-heavy, with a strong emphasis on preemptively designating zones for specific purposes. Moreover, the Phoenix Plan shows remarkable fidelity to European planning fads—with bike lanes and rail systems that make minimal sense in the Gaza Strip.

Instead of grand plans, what Gaza really needs to do is empower Palestinian landowners and regulate them as little as possible. Rather than expropriating land and deciding how it should be used, the enclave’s new governing authority should work to make sure displaced people get their land back (even if its structures have been destroyed), safeguard property owners from exploitation, and then essentially get out of the way. Palestinians should have the right to hold and rebuild on their land, sell it to developers, or pool it with their neighbors’ land to create bigger plots that they can use as they wish. Outside actors and central authorities should primarily provide technical and monetary assistance.

There are exceptions. Gaza’s new central authority (whatever it ends up being) will need to build public infrastructure. It should also create a special economic zone to draw in foreign investment with lower taxes, limited regulation, and heightened security. These tasks will require the strip’s governing entity to acquire some private land with eminent domain. But the previous owners must be justly compensated, and expropriation should be kept to an absolute minimum. In general, it is Gazans—not outside governments—who know best how to turn Gaza into a place that is more pleasant and livable. In other words, to ensure that the strip is rebuilt for the needs of Gazans, it must be rebuilt by Gazans.

At the end of 1945, Tokyo lay........

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