Omar Shaban Ismail
Strategic policy proposals by Omar Shaban Ismail on Gaza reconstruction, governance, and economic partnership.
Omar Shaban's proposal, first set out with Sultan Barakat in 2014 and revised in 2024, for a Gaza Reconstruction Council: a representative body that manages reconstruction and a ring-fenced trust fund, consults Gaza's own institutions, and accounts publicly for every pledge, so that reconstruction does not repeat the failures of 2009 and 2014.
Key finding: Gaza's reconstructions have stalled not for lack of pledges but for lack of an agreed way to manage them: by late December 2014, Palestinian Housing Ministry officials reported receiving about 2% of the $5.4 billion pledged in Cairo. Shaban's answer is a collaborative reconstruction council and a trust fund held outside the budgets of both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
Shaban's diagnosis, drawn from the wars of 2008–09 and 2014, is a dilemma of legitimacy and control: the Palestinian Authority is the recognised authority, Hamas has governed Gaza since 2007, and Israel controls access. Donors feared their aid would reach Hamas; Gaza's institutions were excluded (no Gaza-based organisation attended the 2009 Sharm el-Sheikh conference, whose plan was presented only in English); and no comprehensive account of what became of the 2009 pledges exists. In 2024 he adapted the proposal to the post-October 2023 situation: a temporary council of 12–15 vetted Palestinian Authority employees living in Gaza, working with the de facto authority's civil servants, alongside a police force, internationally monitored crossings and a fund for civil society.
Omar Shaban's path for governing Gaza after the war: a temporary, independent technocratic administration that works with the civil servants who already run the Strip, a retrained police force, internationally monitored crossings, and a defined road to elections and Palestinian reunification.
Key finding: No administration can restore order or launch reconstruction in Gaza without the civil servants of the de facto authority — by Shaban's estimate 20,000–25,000 people in health, education and infrastructure. They must be engaged, while Hamas members themselves would have no place in the future government or security force.
Writing in 2024 and 2025, Shaban starts from hard assumptions: Israel will not accept a Hamas role in governing Gaza; Hamas did not bless the new Palestinian Authority government; and attempting to restore public safety or launch reconstruction without the de facto authority's remaining personnel would be “unrealistic and very risky”. He sees two phases: an interim of about two years under independent technocrats with international backing, then an elected government. Gaza has not voted since 2006, and 68% of its people are under 30.
Omar Shaban's economic agenda for Gaza: lift the blockade and reopen trade, restore water and electricity with solar power, support the private sector, use reconstruction to create local jobs, and invest in the port, gas and export industries — so that Gaza stops depending on handouts.
Key finding: Relief alone cannot revive Gaza. Years of relief programmes did not reduce poverty; what is needed are development interventions that create jobs and rebuild productive capacity — and none of it is sustainable without the free movement of people and goods.
Gaza's once export-oriented economy was hollowed out by the blockade imposed in 2007, the Palestinian division and repeated wars, leaving its population impoverished and dependent on aid (SWP, 2017). The 2023–2025 war deepened the collapse: the final EU–UN–World Bank assessment records an 84% contraction of Gaza's economy. Shaban argues that Gaza still has assets — its location between Asia and Europe, an entrepreneurial and skilled workforce, offshore gas, and a diaspora ready to invest — but that they can be used only if Gaza is reopened to trade and its people regain access to their land.
Omar Shaban's case for a Gaza seaport as an economic lever and an expression of Palestinian sovereignty: reactivate the Oslo and Sharm el-Sheikh agreements, use a temporary solution under UN and international auspices if needed, and treat the port as an incentive for reconciliation rather than a reward for it.
Key finding: A Gaza port is, above all, a political question: Israeli security objections have blocked every alternative. Shaban concludes that reactivating the existing international agreements — with European funding already allocated, estimated in 2016 at $200–250 million — is the only realistic path, and that the port “should not wait for reconciliation. It should be an incentive for it.”
Gaza exported citrus through its own port before 1967. The Oslo Accords and the 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum provided for a Gaza seaport; construction begun with European funding was bombed during the second Intifada, and the project stalled after the 2007 division and blockade. Since then the proposals have multiplied — a port inside Gaza, maritime lines to Cyprus, El-Arish or Turkey, a leased pier at Ashdod or El-Arish, an artificial island — and none has been implemented. Meanwhile 5,000–8,000 truckloads a month enter Gaza from Israel at a high transport cost.
Omar Shaban argues that the European Union, the largest provider of assistance to the Palestinians, should match its money with a political role: an active part in the peace process, support for Palestinian reconciliation and elections, help in lifting the Gaza blockade, and aid linked to democratic good governance.
Key finding: The EU pays more but gets less influence than the United States — “an equation in which they pay more, but get less influence.” Shaban urges Europe to be proactive rather than reluctant and incident-centred, and to bring its financial and technical support into line with its political agenda.
Between 2014 and 2020 the EU allocated €2.2 billion in bilateral assistance to the Palestinians, and European development partners have disbursed around US$1 billion a year since 2008 (European Parliament, 2023). Yet, Shaban observes, the Palestinians themselves have not insisted on an active European presence in a peace process monopolised by the United States. He sees Germany — the EU's largest economy, with close relations with Israel and a positive image in the region — as well placed to lead a European initiative.
Omar Shaban's assessment that the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), for all its flaws, is the most realistic option available — and what it needs to become a governing body rather than a symbolic one: entry into Gaza, real capacity, money, and a link to Palestinian democratic institutions before its mandate ends in December 2027.
Key finding: Despite political resistance and operational constraints, the NCAG “remains the most realistic and immediately available option on the table. For this reason, every effort should be made to ensure its success.” Yet a committee that cannot enter, cannot disburse and cannot protect is not yet a functioning governance body.
Inaugurated in Cairo on 16 January 2026 under the Board of Peace and UN Security Council Resolution 2803, the NCAG is a committee of independent Palestinian technocrats. Israel has kept it out of Gaza; the Palestinian Authority sees it as a potential competitor; Hamas authorities inside Gaza have consolidated their control; and pledged reconstruction funds have largely not reached it. Its mandate excludes borders, security, reconstruction financing and political timelines, and its structure was never ratified by a presidential decree or legislative mandate. Meanwhile Deir al-Balah held Gaza's first local election in two decades on 25 April 2026 — without the committee.
Dozens of plans exist for rebuilding Gaza; none answers who will pay, who will decide, and who will guarantee that what is financed is not destroyed again. Omar Shaban proposes a single national and international financing architecture: one Palestinian authority, a multilateral fund, independent oversight, war-risk guarantees and a political and security agreement.
Key finding: The problem is not that the world lacks the money but that it lacks the political and security guarantee that would make spending in Gaza “an investment in the future rather than a down payment on the next war.” Needs are $71.4 billion over ten years; of the $17 billion pledged in February 2026, only about one percent had been transferred three months later.
A May 2026 review by the Portland Trust counted 34 plans for Gaza's future. The final EU–UN–World Bank assessment (April 2026) puts physical damage at $35.2 billion and economic and social losses at $22.7 billion. A pledge is a political decision; a transfer is a financial, administrative and security one. Investors cannot price assets that may be destroyed in the next war; the Gulf faces its own security needs and competing reconstructions; and financing conditions risk becoming leverage over Palestinian governance — or turning withheld Palestinian revenues into conditional grants.
Omar Shaban's argument, from 2014 to 2025, that the most urgent post-war interventions — shelter, water and electricity, cash, rubble clearance and jobs — must start before donor pledges materialise, and his proposal to rebuild Gaza neighbourhood by neighbourhood under Palestinian ownership so that people can see a viable future.
Key finding: Implementing donor pledges takes a long time to begin, and some needs cannot wait: “There is much that must and can be done without waiting for the donors.” Rebuilding a few neighbourhoods quickly — two in each governorate, one city and one refugee camp — can restore the hope that a whole-of-Gaza approach would take too long to deliver.
After the 2014 war, Shaban urged the national consensus government to borrow from the banks to finance interventions that could not wait for the Cairo conference. After the 2023–2025 war the scale is far greater: 371,888 housing units destroyed or damaged and 1.9 million people displaced (EU–UN–World Bank, 2026), and an estimated 68 million tonnes of debris to remove. In June 2025 he also called for urgent action on Gaza's cash shortage, which he described as having been weaponised.