Spain currently hosts approximately 3,700 American troops at Rota and Moron but routinely bars those vital bases and its airspace whenever Washington and Jerusalem strike Iran. Italy similarly bottles up Sigonella the moment a combat sortie stops looking like basic logistics. Such diplomatic restrictions represent a host-nation veto on American power.
Yet Gaza answers this veto. This littoral strip — encompassing 360 square kilometers and a vital 40-kilometer coastline — provides the exact geographic remedy Washington requires. Israel already controls around 70% of this territory and has built 40 fortified outposts since the 2025 ceasefire. Meanwhile, the Board of Peace remains outside Gaza while Hamas retains a western red zone, and a mere 0.5% of the ruins there have been cleared. Consequently, the United States must transform this Levantine littoral and establish a permanent military flag that no European parliament can pull down.
History previously ran this exact experiment. Muammar Gaddafi evicted the U.S. from Tripoli’s Wheelus Air Base in 1970. Wheelus housed 4,600 Americans as the 6th Fleet’s airhead until a coup ended the lease. Contrast this with Cyprus’s 1960 Treaty of Establishment. London retained 254 square kilometers of sovereign British soil at Akrotiri and Dhekeli, and their runways still launch vital international operations 66 years later. Wheelus died on a host’s volatile permission; Akrotiri lives on sovereign certainty. Gaza deserves this realistic sovereign model.
President Donald Trump must execute three decisive measures. First, Washington, Abu Dhabi, Manama, and Rabat must establish a joint condominium over Gaza. Crucially, securing even indirect Moroccan support will permanently lock Washington into backing Rabat’s natural sovereign claims over Ceuta and Melilla. Inside the strip, residency and property rights must vest exclusively in Palestinians who sign a notarized, video-recorded, Gulf-witnessed instrument renouncing Gaza’s 12 terrorist factions — including Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. Anyone refusing to do this must face immediate transit to the front-line steppes of the Donbas or Russian-controlled Crimea, forcing Moscow to host the rejectionist instruments of the axis it weaponizes. Geopolitically, this permanent condominium will remain entirely separate from Judea and Samaria. There, the terrain will adapt to a four-emirate architecture spanning Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah-Bethlehem, and Jenin-Tubas, all anchored under permanent Israeli security.
Second, Abu Dhabi, Manama, and Rabat must deposit a $25 billion “dead-hand” performance bond with the New York Federal Reserve. Any future rocket fire, tunnel excavation, or terrorist reconstitution triggers automatic forfeiture to the U.S. Treasury and Israeli military engineering. Administered via a strict Bahrain-Abu Dhabi-U.S. cadastral trust, the operational reality is absolute: no bond, no title, no residency.
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Third, the U.S. must establish a 123-square-kilometer Sovereign Base Area across the Israeli-held coast and Rafah. Situated entirely within land Israel already secures, this installation will host the critical Aegis support; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; missile defense; and 6th Fleet nodes that Spain and Italy now routinely ration. Because this sovereign footprint replicates the strategic weight of Cyprus’s Akrotiri, Israel must guarantee the U.S. a 25-year exclusive call on 3 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Leviathan. This allocation taps into a powerhouse that yielded 10.9 bcm in 2025 and is tracking toward a $2.36 billion expansion to 21 bcm by 2029. This gas will supply 27.5% of current output and 14.3% of future capacity, bunkering the base and fleet, with Tamar and Katlan covering any shortfalls.
Europe has long marooned the 6th Fleet on soil treated as a progressive morality play. Gaza anchors American power on land that we and our allies actually own. Wheelus exposed the strategic volatility of leases; Akrotiri proves sovereignty’s absolute primacy. Trump, let’s make it happen.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American–Israeli scholar specializing in international security policy. A multilingual veteran of the Israeli special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees and is completing a doctorate in intelligence and global security in the Washington, D.C., area.