With more than 100, 000 housing units along with orderly industrial parks and even a new airport, glittering towers line the Mediterranean coastline and a “New Gaza” and “New Rafah” in the works.
All without consultation with the people this development is supposed to benefit.
At this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, presented the skeleton of a “masterplan” for post-war Gaza.
“There is no Plan B”, said Kushner, as he unveiled the ambitious plan.
Since October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked villages and army installations in southern Israel and Israel began its bombardment, killing more than 71, 000 Palestinians and thousands more are missing and presumed dead beneath the rubble in Gaza. More than 470 Palestinians have been killed since a ceasefire was announced by Trump on October 10 last year.
The Trump administration’s proposal, which was presented as a plan to rebuild the Palestinian territory, does little to address pressing issues like property and land rights, let alone justice for war crimes, given plans to build shimmering structures on top of an estimated 68 million tons of rubble and war debris, where thousands of bodies are still buried.
Praising the redevelopment plan, Trump, who also spoke at length at the forum in Davos, argued that the war in Gaza “was really coming to an end”, even as Israeli forces killed at least 11 Palestinians, including two children and three journalists, in separate strikes on the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
Trump referred to the development plan as “a real estate person at heart, and it’s all about location.” “And I said, look at this location on the sea, look at this beautiful piece of property, what it could be for so many people”.
Experts have harsh criticism of Trump’s so-called “master plan,” which they claim doesn’t consult with Palestinians and reduces the ongoing catastrophic genocide to an “investment opportunity.”
Trump’s proposal reeks of “imperial plans for Gaza”, Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa wrote in a post on X. This is a plan to “manage Gaza’s indigenous character,” convert what is left of her people into a cheap labor force, and establish a private coastline for “tourism.”
During more than two years of bombardment on Gaza from October 2023, Israel, which is diplomatically supported and armed by the US, destroyed or damaged more than 80 percent of the Strip’s buildings, with residential blocks completely flattened.
The majority of the Strip’s electricity, water, roads, and municipal services have been destroyed, along with all of its major hospitals and universities.
Nearly all the territory’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced, many of them multiple times. People must wait for basic food and water for hours, and Israel, which regulates everything entering and leaving, has tightened its aid efforts there.
So, what’s in the Gaza reconstruction plan, part of Trump’s launch of a “Board of Peace”, could it be realised — and at what cost, especially for the people of Gaza?
What’s the Board of Peace?
Trump made the formal announcement of the “Board of Peace” charter at Davos on Thursday, setting out the organization’s 20-point peace plan and a system to oversee Gaza reconstruction. Membership on the board has a three-year cycle. Candidates looking for a permanent seat  must pay $1 billion.
But the 11-page charter for the Board of Peace does not mention Gaza and appears to have morphed into something far more ambitious – an international disputes forum and a potential rival to the United Nations.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Kushner are currently members of the executive board, with Trump holding a veto. It also includes Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even though he faces an arrest warrant from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for war crimes in Gaza.
Leaders of at least 50 nations have confirmed they have been invited, including US adversaries China and Russia, and several have even offered to do so. However, Trump withdrew Canada’s invitation on Thursday, in what appeared to be a retaliatory move following Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum, in which he denounced Trump’s aggressive stance over Greenland.
Trump stated at the forum that the board would be “very successful in Gaza” and that other initiatives would be made as a result.
Kushner then outlined details about the board’s development plans for Gaza without mentioning plans for a path to Palestinian statehood.
Hamas, the country’s current ruler, blasted the proposal, saying: “Our people in the Gaza Strip will not allow these plans to come into being.”
What exactly is contained in the Gaza plan?
Trump’s development plan includes projections to raise Gaza’s gross domestic product (GDP) to $10bn by 2035, after the size of the territory’s economy crashed to just $362m by 2024 amid the war, 500, 000 new jobs, and at least $25bn in investment for modern utilities and public services.
Kushner did not specify how much money would be spent on the renovation. “As you guys know, peace is a different deal than a business deal, because you’re changing a mindset”, he said, calling the Gaza peace efforts “very entrepreneurial”.
He also concentrated on security, though. “]The] number one thing is going to be security”, Kushner said. No one will invest in or build there without security, no one will. We need investments in order to start giving jobs”, Kusher said.
He continued, noting that the US is “very closely working with the Israelis to figure out a way to de-escalate,” and that Hamas is also working on demilitarization in the coming months.
There is no evidence that Palestinians or their leadership have been consulted over any of these plans. Palestinian organizations and official bodies were not discussed with the Board of Peace, according to Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza.
“We were surprised, as Palestinian actors on the ground, after 10 years of work, and especially the last two years of work in Gaza, that no one consulted us about the plans for Gaza and its future”, he said.
Israel is using this time to carry on its operations in Gaza, according to the leaders who are holding ceremonies at the time.
Here are some of the highlights of Trump’s redevelopment plan:
development in four stages
Presenting a four-phase development timeline beginning in Rafah, southern Gaza, and then moving its way north, Kushner displayed colour-coded maps showing coastal tourism zones, mixed-use towers, and residential and industrial areas, as he unveiled the plan in Davos.
Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, and some parts of Khan Younis are scheduled to begin Phase One of Trump’s rebuilding plan. Phase two will include other parts of Khan Younis, while phase three aims to develop refugee camps in central Gaza. Gaza City, located in the north of the territory, will be covered by Phase 4.
Kushner told attendees at Davos that construction of new developments in all these areas will take two to three years. He did not, however, provide information on the location of Palestinian homes during reconstruction or the allocation of new lots.
plans for coastal tourism
In maps showing the Gaza plan, Trump’s administration has pink-coloured nearly the entire seafront and marked it as a “coastal tourism” zone that will include as many as 180 skyscrapers.
A port is located at the southern end of Gaza, along with the Egyptian border, and an airport is nearby, just a few miles away from the site of the first Gaza airport, which was destroyed in Israeli attacks two decades ago.
Employment and investment
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported that more than 550, 000 people are currently without jobs in Gaza, up by 80% during the conflict, according to a report released in October 2025.
GDP plunged 83 percent in 2024 compared with the previous year, and by 87 percent over two years to $362m. The world’s lowest GDP per person was $161, which is below the lowest level ever.
“Before the war, the Gaza Strip witnessed economic growth, with the opening of many commercial, tourism, and industrial projects, and it became a haven for many investments in all sectors”, Maher Altabbaa, the director-general of the Gaza Governorate Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told Al Jazeera earlier last month.
With a $ 1.5 billion investment in the initiative “Vocational Schools and (Re)-Training for Full Labor Force,” according to Kushner’s proposal, more than 500 000 jobs will be created in the fields of construction, agriculture, manufacturing, and services.
He added that the board aims to use “free market principles” to shift Gaza’s dependence on foreign aid, and unveiled plans for a new “logistics corridor”, a new “trilateral” crossing at Rafah, and roads connecting Gaza’s urban centres in the proposal. The new crossing would be proposed near the border of Gaza, Israel, and Egypt’s Sinai region, according to the plan.
The main, existing Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, meanwhile, is expected to open in both directions next week.
‘ New Rafah’, ‘ New Gaza ‘
Kushner presented a slide showing plans to construct more than 100 000 permanent housing units in Gaza’s southern city under the title “New Rafah,” which showed artificial intelligence-generated images.
About 200 schools and more than 75 medical facilities will be built, he claimed.
Plans to convert the region’s enclave into a center of industry, awash with data centers and other digital infrastructure were revealed in a separate slide, entitled “New Gaza.”
What was Kusher’s opinion of demilitarization?
Kushner said the reconstruction plan would only commence following full disarmament by Hamas and the withdrawal of the Israeli military after that.
Kushner stated that the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a body made up of 15 Palestinian technocrats tasked with overseeing the territory’s day-to-day operations, would either be disbanded or “integrated into” the area. During the war, Israel supported a number of armed groups and gangs in Gaza.
All of Hamas’s heavy weapons are to be decommissioned immediately, and the remaining smaller arms would be decommissioned gradually by a new Palestinian police force, under the plan. Hamas, on the other hand, has not yet resisted disarming, raising concerns that this might render Palestinians in Gaza unable to offer any significant armed resistance to upcoming Israeli attacks.
During the presentation in Davos, Kushner’s slide presentation said that Hamas members who cooperate and disarm , would be “rewarded with amnesty and reintegration, or safe passage”, and some would be “integrated” into the new Palestinian police force after “rigorous vetting”.
Source: Aljazeera
Leave a Reply