Many are already salivating at the potential windfall, eager to carve profits from the ruins of a people
Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, however unhinged it may seem, and if it ever comes to pass, will require the expertise of professionals: architects, engineers, urban planners, legal experts, and many others. These professions are not merely technical; they are bound by professional standards, regulatory bodies, and in many cases, international law. By participating in this scheme, they would not only be violating their ethical responsibilities but could also hold themselves accountable under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Trump has always approached real estate like a con artist, seizing property without paying for it or not fully compensating the professionals who make it possible. The White House press secretary, a modern-day facsimile of Barbie, made the administration’s stance clear on February 5, 2025: “The United States does not intend to pay for the reconstruction of Gaza.” This is no act of diplomacy or aid; it is a trickster’s play, a land grab masquerading as reconstruction of what U.S. bombs have destroyed. Trump has gone even further, declaring that “the Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel after fighting.” The implication is as brazen as it is chilling: Israel has won, or it will win, and the land will be handed over like a prize.
The goal is unmistakably clear: seize Gaza, repurpose it, and ensure its remaining original inhabitants are permanently exiled.
And yet, among the professionals who will make this project possible—those who design, plan, and construct—not a word of opposition is heard. No statements from professional associations. No ethical reckoning. Just a quick calculation: Who will get the contracts? Who will oversee the master plan? Who will profit the most? Many are already salivating at the potential windfall, eager to carve fortunes from the ruins of a people.
The vultures are not merely circling; they are descending. But these are not ordinary scavengers. They have degrees, licenses, awards, and titles. They have sworn to uphold professional standards that demand they do not harm the public. And yet, here they are, silent, complicit, and soon enough, scrambling to participate. If the Brutalists sought to rebuild from the ruins of war, shaping raw concrete into ideology, then today’s architects of dispossession are forging a Neo-Brutalism of erasure. They do not see history, culture, or human lives; they see only a tabula rasa, a vacant plot awaiting their signature.
Some may even dream of being immortalized, like the Guard of Auschwitz, an architect who became an instrument of annihilation. These designers do not wield weapons, yet their creations dictate disappearance. Unlike him, they may never set foot on the land they alter. Their crime is virtual, rendered in digital models, signed off in contracts, and realized in brutal concrete, rigid steel, and fragile glass. Yet the outcome remains the same: a landscape stripped of its people, a past erased, and a crime embedded in the built environment.
Will they justify their involvement as just business? Will they say, If I refuse the commission, someone else will accept it? Will they bask in their iconic designs and multi-million-dollar contracts, pretending that their work is not part of a larger crime? Or will they recognize that by lending their creative skills to an illegal enterprise, they become accomplices to dispossession and erasure? Let’s be clear: this is not just another unethical development project. It is, in its very nature, a war crime. To build on stolen land, to erase a people through design and infrastructure, is not merely immoral—it is criminal. And every professional who signs their name to it will have to live with that reality.
History will remember those who took part in Trump’s scheme, building atop the bones and shattered dreams of the dispossessed, not as visionaries, but as accomplices to genocide by design.
