A postwar plan for Gaza circulating within President Donald Trump’s White House envisions demolishing the strip, confiscating all public land within it, paying small amounts to remove the entire population of more than 2 million Palestinians, and building “a gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub” on its ruins, The Washington Post reported on 31 August.
A 38-page prospectus seen by The Post envisions placing Gaza in a trust controlled by Israeli and American investors. The trust will then serve as the vehicle for the development of the strip into a high-tech commercial, residential, and tourist hub resembling Dubai.
The Post reports that the proposal to establish the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust, or GREAT Trust, was developed by some of the same Israelis who created the deadly, US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was used as a pretext to block the delivery of food aid by the UN.
Financial planning for the GREAT Trust project was carried out by a team from the Boston Consulting Group, which also worked on establishing the GHF.
The plan calls for the “voluntary” departure of Gaza’s residents to another country, making them refugees, or herding them into “restricted, secured zones” amounting to concentration camps, within the strip.
In exchange for abandoning their land, Palestinians would be “offered a digital token by the trust in exchange for rights to redevelop their property,” The Post writes. The token could allegedly be used to “finance a new life elsewhere or eventually redeemed for an apartment in the new ”AI-powered smart cities'” to be built in Gaza.
“Each Palestinian who chooses to leave would be given a $5,000 cash payment and subsidies to cover four years of rent elsewhere, as well as a year of food,” The Post further wrote.
After beginning his term as president in January, Trump boasted that all Palestinians would be removed from Gaza, never to return, and the strip redeveloped as the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
“I looked at a picture of Gaza, it’s like a massive demolition site,” Trump stated just two days after taking office.
“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.”
Trump appointed Steve Witkoff, a Jewish real estate developer from New York, as his Special Envoy to the Middle East and point man for alleged negotiations with Hamas to reach a ceasefire.
Hellbound and Down 