A Glimpse of Gaza Riviera

Sceptics and sycophants have to agree that it may not be a bad thing after all. Donald Trump’s dream of turning the Gaza Strip into a Mediterranean riviera does exist on paper, 38 pages in fact, and the Washington Post has now got a look at the prospectus. Only competing ideas, of course, and none blessed by the president yet. It involves turning Gaza into a high-end tourist resort 

and high-tech manufacturing-cum-data services hub. Palestinians will be housed in residential zones in spacious and modern apartments which will rise out of the rubble of Gaza under a 10-year US trusteeship. But Gazans will have to get out first to get back in. And the fewer that return, the better. The temporary relocation needs a host abroad but nobody has stepped up. Those who choose to live out the reconstruction in Gaza will be kept in secure zones. Money, food, etc will be provided to those leaving voluntarily. The problem is that Israel’s Arab neighbours prefer the Egypt-UAE plan of third-party control of Gaza till a reformed PLO can take over. Trump hopes money will talk, as in the prospects of profit for all in a beautiful piece of real estate. 

The Mystery of Musa al-Sadr 

Musa al-Sadr was a popu- lar Lebanese religious leader who still commands a big following among the Shia. But he has been missing for 47 years. On August 25, 1978, al-Sadr flew to Tripoli at the invitation of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to discuss the Lebanese civil war and the collateral damage from Pales tinian refugees’ activities. On August 31, al-Sadr was picked p by a Libyan government car and never seen again. His followers, including his son, believe he is still in a Libyan 

prison. He would be 97. But in 2011, Kassem Hamadé, a Lebanese-Swedish reporter cover- ing Gaddafi’s overthrow, was taken to a secret morgue in Tripoli and shown al-Sadr’s purported body. Photographs he took were compared by sci- entists in England to images of al-Sadr’s face and his family members’ to conclude a high probability of match. Al-Sadr, a moderate who reached 

out to other faiths, might have changed the course of the Iranian revolution. Did Tehran’s hardliners issue the kill order? Gaddafi was also a military backer of the Pales tinians. When Hamadé and a BBC journalist returned to Tripoli recently to locate the morgue, they were detained by Libyan intelligence. The corpse had an entry wound above the left eye. 

Who’s Killing AfD Candidates? 

It’s hard to stop conspiracy theorists, and paranoid far-right ones at that, when six candidates of their party die before local elections. Although there’s no evi- dence of foul play according to police, AfD’s leader Alice Weidel has let rumours fly. State elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, an indus- trial belt with many recent job losses, are crucial for an AfD hoping to match its showing in the general election in February. Ger- many’s second-largest party isn’t the only one whose candidates have died but the proportion does seem a bit high to let empirical evidence alone prevail. 

Alice WeidelGazaIsraelMusa al-SadrUS trusteeship