U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff told Newsmax on Tuesday that there's "not a lot to govern" in the Gaza Strip today, but Palestinian militant group Hamas won't control the territory as it rebuilds.
Having just returned from a trip to Israel that included a venture into Gaza, Witkoff called the area "ravaged" and said it was "a lot worse than I expected."
"I'd describe it as something that looked like it came out of a Hollywood movie set," he said on "The Record With Greta Van Susteren." "You wouldn't believe it.
"Very few buildings are standing. Anything that is standing is listing to the side. Massive, massive demolition all over the place.
"I now know, I can give you this information, that there's at least 30,000 unexploded projectiles that were fired into Gaza that are dangerous," he said.
"There's no running water, electricity, gas. So probably all the utility lines are busted. It's a rough place right now."
Witkoff said that phase three of a protocol agreement signed by Hamas, the Israelis, and the Biden administration "talks about a reconstruction of Gaza over a five-year period of time." That time frame is "just an impossibility," Witkoff said, and "can never happen."
"We estimate that just cleaning out the unexploded ordnance is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a two-year job. So it's almost as if you've got a minefield in the Gaza Strip today.
"Then after that, you've got a cleanup effort from everything that was demolished, and that's probably at least another three years. After that, you've got to X-ray, basically take a subterranean look, and understand what's left of the stone that's down below," he said.
"It's sort of like Swiss cheese down there. You've got tunnels that are crisscrossing it, and that's degraded the foundations down there and probably has degraded where all the utility lines are working.
"We estimate that a full-on Gaza build can't begin before somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 12 years, which puts the finishing touches on Gaza pursuant to some sort of very credible master plan at the 15 to 20 year mark," Witkoff continued.
"So the notion that we can do anything about Gaza in the immediate future, it just can't happen. And I actually don't believe, and I think it's irresponsible, to be letting people move back there in large amounts because there are many dangerous conditions there."
At present, "there's not a lot to govern" in Gaza today, Witkoff said, before pointing to the "five-year reconstruction effort" in the previously cited protocol agreement.
"I'd call it wishful thinking. And I'm not sure how five years got put into that protocol agreement, but it's just not anything that works," he said.
"Now, beyond that — and the president has said this — whoever is going to govern can't be a part of a terrorist organization and Hamas is. ... We're just not going to have a governing council that includes Hamas."
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