Don’t Spoil the Show: Gaza, Davos, and the Business Class of Peace

There is a rule at Davos—unwritten, but strictly enforced.

Reality is bad for business.

Yossi Alpher learned this the hard way. Sitting on a panel at a luxury resort near the Dead Sea, surrounded by ministers, executives, and conflict “experts,” he made the unforgivable mistake of speaking honestly. Grim facts. Grim assessments. No PowerPoint optimism. No Riviera renderings.

No applause.

A prominent Israeli industrialist later pulled him aside and explained the crime:

“Don’t spoil the show. The idea is to radiate optimism that nourishes an investment climate. It’s all about business. No room for realism.”

That sentence may be the most accurate peace-process doctrine of the 21st century.

Phase II: Now With Billionaires

Fast forward to Davos again. This time, the stage is Gaza—or rather, Gaza™, the investment opportunity.

Trump’s “Board of Peace,” staffed by billionaires and brand managers of global destruction, announces Phase II of a Gaza peace plan with all the seriousness of a crypto launch. Jared Kushner urges the doubters to step aside. Give the plan a chance. Stop being negative. Stop noticing corpses.

After all, what’s a little mass death when beachfront property is on the line?

Alpher, to his credit, refuses to clap. He points out what everyone else pretends not to see: this is not Israel’s show anymore. It’s Washington’s. Israel is being managed. Palestinians are being administered. Gaza is being rebranded.

The Rafah Crossing will open—Israeli objections be damned. Turkey and Qatar will be integrated—Netanyahu’s tantrums notwithstanding. Hamas, inconveniently alive, will not be wished away by PowerPoint slides.

Reality, again, intrudes.

Hamas Is Still There (Awkward)

Israel promised “total victory.” It got total exhaustion.

After two years of pulverization, Hamas is not only alive—it is structurally unavoidable. Its bureaucracy, its local power, its social embeddedness all remain. Even Alpher, a former Mossad official, states the obvious without drama: Hamas will be integrated into whatever Gaza becomes.

This is treated as scandalous only because the lie has been repeated for so long.

Disarmament? Sure. On paper. By a “Gaza Stabilization Force” that does not exist, staffed by countries that have not volunteered, on a timetable that no one can name.

But don’t worry—there are committees. Executive boards. Acronyms. All the institutional décor of seriousness.

Economic Peace, Reheated

If this sounds familiar, it should.

We’ve seen this movie before: economic peace. التنمية بدل الحرية. Money instead of justice. High-rises instead of rights. Development as anesthesia.

Alpher lists the graveyard of Israeli fantasies with clinical precision:

Economic peace
Clan rule
Evangelical aid NGOs
Gazan resettlement schemes
Indonesian and Somaliland mirages
“Total victory”

All collapsed. Quickly. Quietly. Conveniently forgotten.

Now we’re asked to believe in Gaza 2035: per capita income of $12,000, Mediterranean beaches, and a docile population that forgot why its homes were flattened.

History, apparently, will be outsourced.

Security Without Strategy

Here’s where Alpher’s critique turns lethal.

What happens when the IDF withdraws, Hamas isn’t disarmed, Turkish forces arrive, and American developers break ground? What happens when Gaza becomes a hybrid of occupation, proxy politics, and venture capitalism?

Who draws the red lines?

Who enforces them?

Who listens to Israel when Washington has already said, “This is our show.”

Israel, Alpher notes with barely concealed contempt, has never had a viable Gaza strategy—only tactics, slogans, and denial. Netanyahu, having dismantled every alternative, now watches as a foreign power imposes a plan that negates even Israel’s own failed ideas.

This is not sovereignty. It is managed decline.

Peace as a Global Power Play

Zoom out, and the Gaza plan looks less like peace and more like Trump’s geopolitical theme park—alongside Greenland, Venezuela, and other assets awaiting “creative” resolution.

The same administration that flirts with war on Iran wants to rebuild Gaza. Alpher points out the contradiction politely. Reality is less polite: you can’t bomb the region and sell condos at the same time.

Houthis don’t respect master plans.

Hezbollah doesn’t care about investor confidence.

Bottom Line (Spoiler: It’s Grim)

Alpher ends where he began—with realism, the forbidden language of Davos.

When this scheme collapses—as so many Gaza schemes have—it will not be billionaires who pay the price. It will be Palestinians buried under rubble and Israelis dragged into the next round of bloodshed.

But until then, the show must go on.

Smile for the cameras. Trust the process. Don’t spoil the mood.

After all, optimism nourishes the investment climate.

And realism?

Realism is bad for business.

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