Trump ally seeks role in sprawling US base project near Gaza

A close associate of US President Donald Trump is seeking to profit from a $600 million US military base, which is proposed to be built in the southern Israeli occupied territories, a report says, as Washington boosts its presence near Gaza under the guise of stabilization, amid Israel's ceaseless violations of the October ceasefire.

Nathan Albers, owner of the Florida-based Disaster Management Group (DMG) and a frequent Mar-a-Lago visitor, is positioning his firm to build a proposed US military base near the border of the besieged Gaza Strip in the southern Israeli occupied territories, Israel’s daily newspaper Haaretz reported on Tuesday.

According to the report, the US base is expected to “generate revenues worth billions of shekels for whoever builds it” and that there are “already parties positioning themselves to profit from it,” including the DMG, which specializes in the construction and operation of temporary facilities.

The base, intended to host thousands of US and international troops under a so-called “International Stabilization Force,” faces skepticism from countries unwilling to risk fighting the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas on Israel’s behalf.

Israeli authorities are nonetheless preparing for construction, considering whether the facility would be in teh Israeli occupied territories or inside Gaza, beyond the Israel-controlled "Yellow Line".

According to Haaretz, an official from Israel’s ministry of diaspora affairs contacted the so-called Israel Land Authority (ILA) to set up a meeting between senior ILA officials and representatives from DMG. The meeting was arranged for December 8, and on that day, a jet registered to Albers landed in the Israeli occupied territories from Miami, departing two days later.

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The planned facility would be enormous, with American contractors already assessing the logistics of feeding 10,000 stationed soldiers. This mirrors the US’s pattern of creating military infrastructure abroad that benefits private companies tied to political allies, such as Albers’ prior $1.3 billion migrant tent city project in Texas.

A recent Guardian report stated that US logistics specialists were deployed to The Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), a smaller US base in the Israeli occupied territories, to allegedly boost aid deliveries, only to discover that Israel’s restrictions were the main obstacle, leading several dozen personnel to leave within weeks. The report also noted that the Israeli military was spying on US troops and their allies stationed at the CMCC.

Building a larger base now could pull the US even deeper into Israel’s military aggression against the Palestinian population in the war-ravaged territory.

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