A post-war plan for Gaza circulating within the Trump Administration, modelled on United States President Donald Trump’s vow to “take over” the enclave, would turn it into a trusteeship administered by the US for at least 10 years while it is transformed into a gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing
One Gaza post-war plan would establish US control and pay Palestinians to leave
By Karen DeYoung, Cate Brown
Washington Post·
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An aerial view showing the destruction and displacement in southern Gaza on August 1. Photo / Heidi Levine, for The Washington Post
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Called the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust, or Great Trust, the proposal was developed by some of the same Israelis who created and set in motion the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) now distributing food inside the enclave.
Financial planning was done by a team working at the time for the Boston Consulting Group.
People familiar with the trust planning and with Administration deliberations over post-war Gaza spoke about the sensitive subject on the condition of anonymity. The White House referred questions to the State Department, which declined to comment.
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BCG has said that work on the trust plan was not expressly approved and that two senior partners who led the financial modelling were subsequently fired.
Last week Trump held a White House meeting to discuss ideas for how to end the war, now approaching the two-year mark, and what comes next.
Participants included US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special presidential envoy Steve Witkoff; former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose views on Gaza’s future have been solicited by the Administration; and Trump’ son-in-law Jared Kushner, who handled much of the President’s first-term initiatives on the Middle East and has extensive private interests in the region.
No readout of the meeting or policy decisions were announced, although Witkoff said the night before the gathering that the Administration had “a very comprehensive plan.”
It’s not clear if the detailed and comprehensive Great Trust proposal is what Trump has in mind. But major elements of it, according to two people familiar with the planning, were specifically designed to make real the President’s vision of a “Riviera of the Middle East”.
It purports to require no US government funding and offer significant profit to investors.
Unlike the controversial and sometimes cash-strapped GHF, which uses armed private US security contractors to distribute food in four southern Gaza locations, the trust plan “does not rely on donations”, the prospectus says.
Instead, it would be financed by public and private-sector investment in what it calls “mega-projects”, from electric vehicle plants and data centres to beach resorts and high-rise apartments.
Calculations included in the plan envision a nearly fourfold return on a US$100 billion investment after 10 years, with ongoing “self-generating” revenue streams. Some elements of the proposal were first reported by the Financial Times.
“I believe [Trump] is going to have a bold decision” when the fighting ends, said one person familiar with internal administration deliberations. “There are multiple different variations where the US Government could go, depending … on what happens.”
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Competing plans for Gaza
Proposals for the day after the war ends in Gaza have proliferated almost since the day it started on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants invaded southern Israel, killing around 1200 people and taking about 250 hostages.
As Israel’s military response has systematically reduced the enclave to rubble - displacing hundreds of thousands, leaving more than 60,000 Palestinians dead and nearly half million facing what a global crisis monitor said was catastrophic hunger - think tanks, academics, international organisations, governments and individuals have proposed ways to rehabilitate and govern Gaza.
Early in the war, proposals surfaced in Israel to create Hamas-free zones or “bubbles” under Israeli military protection in Gaza where Palestinians could receive humanitarian aid and gradually govern themselves as the conflict came to an end.
In January, less than a week before Trump took office, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented the Biden Administration’s post-war route to statehood.
It called for an “interim administration” for Gaza, overseen by the United Nations with security provided by vetted Palestinians and unspecified “partner nations” that would eventually cede power to a “reformed” Palestinian Authority.
The Palestinian Authority, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates have all laid out plans.
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At a March summit, Arab leaders endorsed the Egyptian proposal that outlines the formation of a government of Gaza technocrats and Palestinian Authority officials with funding from Gulf states. In addition to the possibility of putting Arab peacekeepers on the ground, officials in Cairo have said that members of the largely disbanded Gaza police force are being trained in Egypt to provide security after Hamas is disarmed.
Both Israel and the US - the only countries that have publicly talked about even temporarily relocating Gazans from Gaza - have rejected the Arab proposal.
American security contractors working for the GHF have also been in discussions with Israel and possible humanitarian partners over a plan in which they would clear Gaza of unexploded ordnance and debris, and secure zones in which Palestinians would live temporarily as part of a reconstruction plan.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never offered a clear vision for Gaza’s future beyond saying Hamas must be disarmed and all hostages returned.
He has said Israel must retain security control of the enclave and rejected any future governance there by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, as well as the prospect of Palestinian statehood.
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Israel, which says its troops now control 75% of the enclave, has approved a new offensive to take over the rest.
Far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition government have advocated for permanent Israeli occupation.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has called for the annexation and Israeli resettlement of Gaza, said at a Friday news conference that “Israel must completely hold control of the entire Strip, forever. We will annex a security perimeter and open the gates of Gaza for voluntary immigration.”
In recent weeks, Netanyahu has said he intends to take over a Hamas-free Gaza but “we don’t want to keep it”.
Shopping for third-country hosts
Removing Palestinians from Gaza - through persuasion, compensation, or force - has been a subject of debate in Israeli politics since Gaza was first wrested from Egyptian control and occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.
Israeli settlers lived alongside Palestinians there until 2005, when a peace agreement mandated their departure.
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Full Israeli withdrawal led to a power struggle between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hamas, which successfully wrested control of Gaza after winning a parliamentary majority in a 2006 election - the last election held in the enclave.
That uncomfortable status quo held through numerous brief exchanges of fire between Israel and Hamas until the 2023 attack, when thousands of militants breached the Israeli security barrier that surrounds Gaza on all sides but its narrow southern border with Egypt, over-running Israel Defence Forces bases and murdering civilians.
Israel, Netanyahu has said, is “talking to several countries” about taking relocated Gazans. Libya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Indonesia, and Somaliland have been mentioned as potential options.
All except Indonesia - which previously has said it would temporarily admit a few thousand Palestinians seeking work or medical treatment - are in Africa and in the midst of their own conflicts and civilian deprivation.
Libya is ruled by two rival governments that have frequently come to blows, and Ethiopia has seen sporadic civil war and conflict with its neighbours. Israel, which has restricted humanitarian assistance to Gaza, said this month that it would send medical aid and other supplies to South Sudan.
No country has recognised Somaliland, a former British protectorate that unilaterally declared its independence from war-torn Somalia in 1991.
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After its leaders offered a place for relocated Gazans in exchange for statehood recognition, Trump told reporters earlier this month that “we are looking into that right now”.
Trump outlines his vision
During his 2024 election campaign, Trump said that he would quickly stop the Gaza war. When he returned to the theme as president, it was mostly to talk about how he would employ his property developer skills once the Gazans were gone.
“I looked at a picture of Gaza, it’s like a massive demolition site,” Trump told reporters while signing a raft of executive orders in the Oval Office two days after his inauguration.
“It’s got to be rebuilt in a different way.”
Gaza, he said, was “a phenomenal location … on the sea, the best weather. Everything’s good. Some beautiful things can be done with it.”
Two weeks later, at a White House news conference with Netanyahu, Trump said “the US will take over the Gaza Strip”. Describing a “long-term ownership position”, he added that everyone he had spoken to about it “loves the idea”.
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“I’ve studied this very closely over a lot of months, and I’ve seen it from every different angle,” Trump said. “I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy. But the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so magnificent.”
Netanyahu, smiling at Trump’s side, called it a “bold vision”, and said that Israel and the United States had a “common strategy”.
Asked later that day in an interview with Fox News if Gaza’s Palestinian residents could return after reconstruction, Trump said, “No, they wouldn’t, because they’re going to have much better housing” elsewhere.
Within hours, Rubio and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt walked back those remarks.
Part of Trump’s “generous proposal” was that Palestinians would need somewhere to live “in the interim” while reconstruction took place, Rubio said.
Leavitt insisted that “the President has made it clear that they need to be temporarily relocated out of Gaza”.
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Just a week later, Trump returned to the subject at an Oval Office session with a visibly disconcerted King Abdullah II of Jordan.
“With the US being in control of that piece of land,” he said, referring to Gaza, “you’re going to have stability in the Middle East for the first time. And the Palestinians, or the people that live now in Gaza, will be living beautifully in another location.”
Shortly after his February vow to take over Gaza, Trump reposted on his Truth Social account an AI-generated video of his vision.
It begins with children picking through the rubble amid gun-toting militants, then quickly shifts to a wonderland of sparkling high-rises, pristine beaches, and money falling from the sky.
Trump and Netanyahu appear sunbathing on the Gaza shore, and a golden Trump statue lords benevolently over a clean and lively urban scene.
A catchy song provides the soundtrack. “Donald’s coming to set you free/ Bringing delight to all you see. No more tunnels, no more fear/ Trump Gaza is finally here.”
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In the wake of Arab outrage and widespread charges that any forced removal would be a violation of international law, both Trump and Netanyahu more recently have stressed that any post-war relocation of Gazans would be voluntary and, if the Palestinians chose, temporary.
In the meantime, Israel has moved to corral the Gaza population of about two million in a narrow strip of waterfront in the south while it prepares for its northern offensive in Gaza City.
The United Nations estimates that 90% of the housing in the enclave has been destroyed.
The questions of what to do about the population of Gaza while the territory is made habitable and who will govern it in the future are central, no matter what plan is adopted.
“The scale of destruction is massive and unlike anything we’ve seen before, even within the context of Gaza,” said Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow at the Arab Centre in Washington.
“The urgency is extreme. The scale of the reconstruction project is extreme. And the political question is as unclear as ever.”
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Redeveloping a new ‘Riviera’
Trump’s February vow to own and redevelop Gaza offered both a green light and a road map for the group of Israeli businessmen, led by entrepreneurs Michael Eisenberg, an Israeli American, and Liran Tancman, a former Israeli military intelligence officer.
They had already handed off the GHF project to implementers and moved on to the post-war problem in consultation with international financial and humanitarian experts, and potential government and private investors, as well as some Palestinians, according to people familiar with the planning.
By spring, a Washington-based team from BCG, which had separately been hired to work with the primary US contractor setting up the GHF food distribution programme, was working on detailed planning and financial modelling for the Great Trust.
Eisenberg and Tancman declined to comment for this article. A person familiar with the planning said that the prospectus was completed in April with only minimal change since then, but that there was plenty of room for tweaks.
“It’s not prescriptive, but is exploring what is possible,” the person said. “The people of Gaza need to be enabled to build something new, like the President said, and have a better life.”
Those familiar with the initiative in both Washington and Israel compared it to US trusteeships of Pacific islands after World War II, and the post-war governance and economic roles played by General Douglas MacArthur in Japan and Secretary of State George C. Marshall in Germany.
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While the Pacific trust territories were administered by the US, the arrangement was approved by the United Nations, whose membership is unlikely to agree to a similar relationship with Gaza.
The trust planners maintain that under the customary international law doctrine of uti possidetis juris (Latin for “as you possess under law”) and limits on Palestinian autonomy under the 1993 Oslo agreements, Israel has administrative control over the occupied territories and the power to give it away.
As outlined in the trust document, Israel would transfer “Administrative Authorities and Responsibilities in Gaza to the Great Trust under a US-Israel bilateral agreement” that would “evolve” into a formal trusteeship.
The outline foresees eventual investments by “Arab and other countries” that would turn the arrangement into a “multi-lateral institution”.
Trump Administration officials have dismissed as mere public rhetoric the insistence of Arab governments, particularly in the Gulf, that they will only support a post-war plan leading to Palestinian statehood.
Israel would maintain “overarching rights to meet its security needs” during the first year of the plan, while nearly all internal security would be provided by unspecified “TCN” (third-country nationals) and “Western” private military contractors. Their role would gradually decrease over a decade as trained “local police” take over.
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The trust would govern Gaza for a multi-year period it estimates will take 10 years “until a reformed and deradicalised Palestinian Polity is ready to step in its shoes”.
The document makes no reference to eventual Palestinian statehood.
The undefined Palestinian governing entity, it says, “will join the Abraham Accords”, Trump’s first-term negotiation that led to the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and four Arab states. Trump has said he expects to expand that achievement before leaving office.
The plan talks of Gaza’s location “at the crossroads” of what will become a “pro-American” region, giving the US access to energy resources and critical minerals, and serving as a logistics hub for the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor that was first announced during the Biden Administration but derailed by the Israel-Gaza war.
Gaza’s reconstruction would start with the removal of massive amounts of debris and unexploded ordnance, along with the rebuilding of utilities and the electrical grid.
Initial costs would be financed using as collateral the 30% of Gaza land that planners have said is already “publicly” owned and would immediately belong to the trust.
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That is “the biggest and easiest. No need to ask anyone,” Tancman noted in the margin of one trust planning document seen by the Post. “I’m afraid to write that,” Eisenberg replied in a note, “because it could look like appropriation of land”.
Investor-financed “mega-projects” include paving a ring road and tram line around Gaza’s perimeter, which the planners flatteringly label the “MBS Highway,” after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose approval of such an initiative would go a long way towards regional acceptance.
A modern north-south highway through Gaza’s centre is named after United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
A new port and airport would be built in the far south, with direct land connections to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are both publicly committed to the Egyptian proposal for Gaza and eventual Palestinian statehood, with no indication that they have agreed to any element of the trust plan.
The Great Trust also envisions a water desalination plant and solar array in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula that would provide Gaza with water and electricity.
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Gaza’s eastern border with Israel would be a “smart” industrial zone, including American electric vehicle companies and regional data centres to serve Israel and the Gulf countries. Gaza’s western waterfront would be reserved for the “Gaza Trump Riviera”, boasting “world-class resorts” with the possibility of artificial islands similar to the palm-shaped ones built off the UAE city of Dubai.
In the centre of the enclave, between the waterfront resorts and the industrial zone - which the plan projects would create a million jobs - apartment buildings of up to 20 stories would be constructed in six to eight “dynamic, modern and AI-powered smart planned cities”.
The mixed-use areas would include “residences, commerce, light industry and other facilities, including clinics and hospitals, schools and more”, interspersed with “green areas, including agricultural land, parks and golf courses”.
Gazan families who remain or leave and then return after residential areas are completed to exchange their land tokens, would be offered ownership of new 167sq m apartments the plan values at US$75,000 each.
Adil Haque, a professor and expert on the law of armed conflict at Rutgers University, said that any plan in which Palestinians are prevented from returning to their homes, or inadequately supplied with food, medical care and shelter, would be unlawful - regardless of any cash incentive offered for departures.
Abu Mohamed, a 55-year-old father speaking over WhatsApp from Gaza yesterday, said that despite the catastrophic situation, he would never leave.
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“I’m staying in a partially destroyed house in Khan Younis now,” he said.
“But we could renovate. I refuse to be made to go to another country, Muslim or not. This is my homeland.”
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