Glittering towers lining the Mediterranean shoreline, a “New Gaza” and “New Rafah” within the offing, with greater than 100,000 housing models alongside orderly industrial parks – and even a brand new airport.
All with out session with the individuals this improvement is meant to profit.
That is the skeleton of a “masterplan” for post-war Gaza, offered by Jared Kushner, United States President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and an actual property developer, on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Switzerland this week.
“There isn’t a Plan B,” stated Kushner, as he unveiled the formidable plan.
Israel’s genocidal conflict on Gaza has killed greater than 71,000 Palestinians – with hundreds extra lacking and presumed lifeless beneath the rubble – in Gaza since October 7, 2023, the day Hamas launched an assault on villages and military outposts in southern Israel and Israel started its bombardment. Greater than 470 Palestinians have been killed since a ceasefire was introduced by Trump on October 10 final 12 months.
Offered as a plan to rebuild the Palestinian territory, the Trump administration’s proposal this week, nevertheless, gives no perception into core points resembling property and land rights — not to mention justice for conflict crimes — amid plans to assemble shimmering buildings atop an estimated 68 million tonnes of rubble and conflict particles, the place hundreds of our bodies stay buried.
Praising the redevelopment plan, Trump, who additionally spoke at size on the discussion board in Davos, argued that the conflict in Gaza “was actually coming to an finish”, whilst Israeli forces killed no less than 11 Palestinians, together with two kids and three journalists, in separate strikes on the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
“I’m an actual property particular person at coronary heart, and it’s all about location,” Trump stated in regards to the improvement plan. “And I stated, take a look at this location on the ocean, take a look at this stunning piece of property, what it could possibly be for therefore many individuals.”
Consultants have strongly criticised the “imperialist” imaginative and prescient of Trump’s so-called grasp plan, which they are saying doesn’t embrace any session with Palestinians and reduces the continuing catastrophic genocide to an “funding alternative”.
Trump’s proposal reeks of “imperial plans for Gaza,” Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa wrote in a put up on X. “It is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character, flip what stays of her individuals into an inexpensive labor power to handle their ‘industrial zones’ and create an unique shoreline for ‘tourism’.”
Throughout greater than two years of bombardment on Gaza from October 2023, Israel, which is diplomatically supported and armed by the US, destroyed or broken greater than 80 % of the Strip’s buildings, with residential blocks fully flattened.
All main hospitals and universities, and a lot of the Strip’s electrical energy and water programs, roads and municipal companies have been destroyed.
Practically all of the territory’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced, lots of them a number of occasions. Individuals face hours-long queues for primary meals and water, and help into the territory has been restricted by Israel, which controls every part that goes out and in.
So, what’s within the Gaza reconstruction plan, a part of Trump’s launch of a “Board of Peace”; might or not it’s realised — and at what price, particularly for the individuals of Gaza?
What’s the Board of Peace?
In Davos on Thursday, Trump formally introduced the constitution for his “Board of Peace”, which he has pitched as the following part of his administration’s 20-point peace plan and a mechanism to supervise the reconstruction of Gaza. Membership on the board has a three-year cycle. These in search of a everlasting seat should pay $1bn.
However the 11-page constitution for the Board of Peace doesn’t point out Gaza and seems to have morphed into one thing much more formidable – a global disputes discussion board and a possible rival to the United Nations.
The chief board thus far contains former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kushner, with Trump because the chairman himself with veto energy. It additionally contains Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, regardless that he faces an arrest warrant from the Worldwide Court docket of Justice (ICJ) for conflict crimes in Gaza.
A minimum of 50 nations’ leaders have confirmed that they’ve obtained invites, together with US adversaries China and Russia — and several have agreed to join. Nonetheless, Trump withdrew Canada’s invitation on Thursday, in what seemed to be a retaliatory transfer following Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech on the World Financial Discussion board, by which he denounced Trump’s aggressive stance over Greenland.
Talking on the discussion board, Trump stated the board was going to be “very profitable in Gaza” and “we are able to unfold out to different issues as we succeed with Gaza”.
Kushner then outlined particulars in regards to the board’s improvement plans for Gaza with out mentioning plans for a path to Palestinian statehood.
Hamas, which at the moment governs Gaza, condemned the proposal, saying: “Our individuals within the Gaza Strip won’t enable these plans to move.”
What’s within the Gaza plan?
Trump’s improvement plan contains projections to boost Gaza’s gross home product (GDP) to $10bn by 2035, after the dimensions of the territory’s financial system crashed to only $362m by 2024 amid the conflict; 500,000 new jobs; and no less than $25bn in funding for contemporary utilities and public companies.
Kushner didn’t specify who would fund the redevelopment. “As you guys know, peace is a special deal than a enterprise deal, since you’re altering a mindset,” he stated, calling the Gaza peace efforts “very entrepreneurial”.
Nonetheless, he additionally targeted on safety. “[The] primary factor goes to be safety,” Kushner stated. “With out safety, no person’s going to make investments, no person’s gonna come construct there. We want investments with a view to begin giving jobs,” Kusher stated.
He added that the US is working “very intently with the Israelis to determine a option to de-escalation, and the following part is working with Hamas on demilitarisation”.
There isn’t a proof that Palestinians or their management have been consulted over any of those plans. Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Community in Gaza, stated Palestinian civil society and official our bodies weren’t included in discussions with the Board of Peace.
“We have been stunned, as Palestinian actors on the bottom, after 10 years of labor, and particularly the final two years of labor in Gaza, that nobody consulted us in regards to the plans for Gaza and its future,” he stated.
“On the time these leaders are holding ceremonies, Israel is utilizing this era to proceed its actions in Gaza.”
Listed below are a few of the highlights of Trump’s redevelopment plan:
4 phases of improvement
Presenting a four-phase improvement timeline starting in Rafah, southern Gaza, after which shifting its method north, Kushner displayed colour-coded maps displaying coastal tourism zones, mixed-use towers, and residential and industrial areas, as he unveiled the plan in Davos.
Section certainly one of Trump’s plan for rebuilding is ready to start out in Rafah, Gaza’s southern-most metropolis, and a few elements of Khan Younis. Section two will embrace different elements of Khan Younis, whereas part three goals to develop refugee camps in central Gaza. Section 4 will cowl Gaza Metropolis, which is within the north of the territory.
Kushner informed attendees at Davos that development of recent developments in all these areas will take two to 3 years. Nonetheless, he didn’t present particulars about the place Palestinians would dwell throughout reconstruction, and the way new properties can be allotted.
Coastal tourism plans
In maps displaying the Gaza plan, Trump’s administration has pink-coloured almost all the seafront and marked it as a “coastal tourism” zone that can embrace as many as 180 skyscrapers.
The proposal additionally reveals a port on the southwestern finish of Gaza, alongside the border with Egypt, and an space zoned for an airport shut by, a number of miles from the positioning of the unique Gaza airport, which was destroyed in Israeli assaults twenty years in the past.
Employment and funding
In a report revealed in October 2025, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics stated unemployment in Gaza rose by 80 % through the conflict, with greater than 550,000 individuals at the moment with out jobs.
GDP plunged 83 % in 2024 in contrast with the earlier 12 months, and by 87 % over two years to $362m. GDP per capita plummeted to $161 yearly, putting it among the many lowest on the earth.
“Earlier than the conflict, the Gaza Strip witnessed financial progress, with the opening of many business, tourism, and industrial tasks, and it turned a haven for a lot of investments in all sectors,” Maher Altabbaa, the director-general of the Gaza Governorate Chamber of Commerce and Business, informed Al Jazeera earlier final month.
The proposal offered by Kushner claims greater than 500,000 jobs in development, agriculture, manufacturing and companies will probably be created, with a $1.5bn funding in an initiative referred to as “Vocational Colleges and (Re)-Coaching for Full Labor Drive”.
He added that the board goals to make use of “free market rules” to shift Gaza’s dependence on overseas help, and unveiled plans for a brand new “logistics hall”, a brand new “trilateral” crossing at Rafah, and roads connecting Gaza’s city centres within the proposal. The plan appears to recommend the brand new crossing can be constructed on the level the place Gaza, Israel and Egypt’s Sinai area meet.
The primary, current Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, in the meantime, is predicted to open in each instructions subsequent week.
‘New Rafah’, ‘New Gaza’
Kushner offered a slide displaying synthetic intelligence-generated photos titled “New Rafah”, which confirmed plans to construct greater than 100,000 everlasting housing models in Gaza’s southern metropolis.
About 200 faculties and greater than 75 medical services will probably be constructed, he claimed.
One other slide, titled “New Gaza”, confirmed plans to show the enclave right into a centre of trade, heavy on knowledge centres and different digital infrastructure.
What did Kusher say about demilitarisation?
Kushner stated the reconstruction plan would solely start following full disarmament by Hamas and the withdrawal of the Israeli army after that.
Israel backed a number of armed teams and gangs in Gaza through the conflict, and Kushner stated these would both be dismantled or “built-in into” the Nationwide Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) — a physique of 15 Palestinian technocrats tasked with the day-to-day working of the territory.
All of Hamas’s heavy weapons are to be decommissioned instantly, and the remaining smaller arms can be decommissioned step by step by a brand new Palestinian police power, beneath the plan. Hamas, on its half, has not dedicated to disarming – amid worries that this might remove what little armed resistance Palestinians in Gaza may be capable to supply to future Israeli assaults.
Through the presentation in Davos, Kushner’s slide presentation stated that Hamas members who cooperate and disarm can be “rewarded with amnesty and reintegration, or secure passage”, and a few can be “built-in” into the brand new Palestinian police power after “rigorous vetting”.
Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), has referred to as for the complete implementation of the peace plan, together with the withdrawal of Israeli forces and a central function for the PA in administering Gaza.
