Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has long focused on the Middle East. Photo / Getty Images
There is little consensus in the Middle East but there is virtually unanimous agreement on one thing: post-war Gaza could become the new Dubai.
The vision of the war-torn enclave becoming the “Riviera of the Middle East” is not just a Trumpian pipe dream.
Israel has long said that is what Gaza should be, and now so do all the surrounding Arab states.
Under the US$53 billion ($90b) “Egypt plan”, approved by the Arab League in Cairo in March, Gaza could be rebuilt in a space of just five years, incorporating glistening towers, parks, ports, business zones and an international airport.
Even Gazans say they want it. When asked to imagine a vision for the future of Gaza in high-quality face-to-face polling conducted between April and May this year, “by far their preferred choice” was to become like the United Arab Emirates, home to the high rises of Dubai.
This got 27% support, followed by Turkey (15%), Singapore (14%) and Saudi Arabia (12%).
The poll, commissioned by the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) and conducted through face-to-face interviews in Gaza, also found that support for Hamas was just less than 4% and falling, about the same as support for “armed resistance”.
It is not known if Blair raised these and other insights at the White House meeting on Gaza’s reconstruction chaired by Donald Trump yesterday, but it should not come as a surprise that the former British Prime Minister was there.
Colleagues say that finding a lasting solution to the Israel-Palestine issue remains his “obsession”.
Although one prominent Middle East expert exclaimed “God help us” when told of his involvement, there are few senior statesmen who know the region as well, or who are better funded, than Blair.
After leaving No 10 in 2007, Blair was appointed Middle East envoy, representing the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia.
He left the post in 2015 but his institute, which has a turnover of US$145 million, with more than 800 staff and offices in Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, and Washington DC, has remained active in the region ever since.
The Telegraph has previously reported that he was advising Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, and sources say he has held a series of meetings in Israel and the Gulf over the last few months.
Importantly – especially from a US perspective – Blair played a significant role as Prime Minister during the negotiations that led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the peace accord that ended the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
That conflict has parallels with the Israel-Palestinian issue and some of its principles, notably power-sharing, popular consent, parity of esteem and demilitarisation, are already being echoed in the Arab League’s reconstruction plans.
The Blair Institute declined to comment on the meeting in Washington or Blair’s role.
However, it stressed that it had no truck with Israeli or US calls to relocate Gazans, a proposal that it had “never authored, developed, or endorsed”.
“TBI’s work in the region, since its inception, has always been dedicated to building a better Gaza for Gazans,” it said.
Blair is reported to have been joined by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, at the White House meeting.
Kushner is the architect of the Abraham Accords which normalised diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states, including the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco, during Trump’s first term.
Although no longer formally an adviser to Trump, he remains close to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, running billions of dollars of international investment for them.
He is also thought to have helped smooth the way for Trump’s May 2025 tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, which reportedly secured US$2 trillion in inward investment for the US.
Trump may be hoping Blair and Kushner can help him secure an elusive deal: an agreement that not only brings peace and reconstruction to Gaza, but one that keeps the Arab states on side and their money flowing into America.
It is, after all, no longer Israel, but the Gulf which is seen in material terms as the region’s “villa in the jungle” – and Trump is very much America First.
Trump has also made it clear he is “sick” of the war in Gaza and wants a rapid resolution to it, not least because parts of his Maga base are turning against Israel.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the diehard Maga senator, has intimated that the US risks becoming perceived as an accomplice to war crimes if the conflict continues.
She has called on Trump to cut military funding for Israel, stating: “Israel bombed the Catholic Church in Gaza, and that entire population is being wiped out as they continue their aggressive war in Gaza”.
Whether Blair and others can help turn a shared vision for Gaza’s reconstruction into something concrete is, of course, another question.
Trump’s original plan for turning Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” involved turfing out the strip’s two million-strong population while the building work was done.
This idea has since been doubled down on by several Israeli ministers who are now openly talking about shipping Gazans to South Sudan, itself a failed state.
This has not just sparked concern among humanitarians but fears in the European Union and United Kingdom about a new wave of irregular migration to Europe, the Telegraph understands.
This partly explains the co-ordinated recent calls and pledges from France, Britain, Malta, Canada, and others to formally recognise Palestine as a state.
Trump’s February vision for Gaza also paid no heed to Arab states’ insistence that a “road map” to a sustainable Palestinian state is established before they would agree or help finance anything.
The Egypt plan aims to overcome these problems by combining Trump’s vision for a new Dubai with a process for producing a sustainable peace in the region.
Crucially, it does not involve removing the Gazan population, voluntarily or otherwise.
The three-stage plan spans five years and envisages a group of independent Palestinian technocrats, backed by an international fund and the Palestinian Authority, overseeing the strip’s redevelopment.
Hamas would play no direct role either in Gaza’s governance or security, subject to a wider peace and plan for Palestinian statehood being agreed by Israel.
Egypt and Jordan have pledged to train Palestinian police and deploy them to Gaza, and the plan calls on the UN Security Council to consider authorising a peacekeeping mission to Gaza until reconstruction is complete.
There are several hard objections Blair and others would have to overcome to get the plan accepted by Hamas and the Israelis.
Hamas is willing to accept its removal from government but is adamantly against its disarmament – something the Egypt plan does not tackle.
In Northern Ireland, the IRA and other paramilitary groups were persuaded to put their weapons “beyond use”.
Israel has long said Hamas remaining armed is a red line and Benjamin Netanyahu, its Prime Minister, has spent a lifetime railing against the formation of a Palestinian state, and is unlikely to accept one now unless his hand is forced by the US.
And that’s where Blair may just bring a convening magic that others lack.
He did, after all, once bring Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, and Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Féin, to the same table.
At age 72, can he now give the Egypt plan a Western rinse and get Trump, who is chasing a Nobel Prize and Arab investment, to embrace it as his own?
And might he get Netanyahu to see that an American-backed peace in the region is in his interests too? Perhaps even something that would get the arrest warrant against him from the World Court formally dropped?
It seems improbable, but Blair is an optimist and referred to even in senior Tory ranks as “the master”.
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