US-Israel plan aims to empty Gaza of Palestinians, build AI-powered 'smart cities': Report
Israeli and US investors eye profits from redeveloping Gaza once the strip is demolished and the Palestinian population is ethnically cleansed
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.
In March, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also a prominent Jewish real estate developer from New York, praised the "very valuable" potential of Gaza's "waterfront property" and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it "cleans up" the strip.
"It's a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel's perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up," Kushner said in an interview at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
The Post reports that Trump's comments provided a "green light and a road map" for a group of Israeli businessmen, "led by entrepreneurs Michael Eisenberg, an Israeli American, and Liran Tancman, a former Israeli military intelligence officer," to spearhead the redevelopment project once Gaza had been destroyed and ethnically cleansed.
The trust planners claim Israel can steal the 30 percent of Gaza's land that is publicly owned and place it under the ownership of the trust. The Postwrites that according to the planners, "limits on Palestinian autonomy under the 1993 Oslo agreements" give Israel "administrative control over the occupied territories and the power to give it away."
This confiscated public land would be used as collateral to finance the real estate development. That is "the biggest and easiest. No need to ask anyone," wrote Tancman as a note in the planning document.
"I'm afraid to write that," Eisenberg wrote in a note in response, "because it could look like appropriation of land."
The planning documents say Israel would transfer authority to administer Gaza to the GREAT Trust under a US-Israel bilateral agreement.
Israel would maintain the right to intervene militarily at any time to "meet its security needs," while internal security would be provided by private military contractors.
The plan states that Gaza will become the logistics hub of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), providing the US with access to energy resources and critical minerals.
Several "mega-projects" are planned for Gaza, including paving a ring road and tram line around the strip's perimeter, which the Israeli military has flattened under the pretext of creating a security zone.
A new north-south highway would be constructed through Gaza's center, while a new port and airport would be established in the south, along with roads connecting Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. The plan envisions receiving investment and support from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.
The Post writes that "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 response to the plan, Abu Mohamed, a 55-year-old father in Gaza, told The Post that he would never leave, despite Israel's genocidal campaign to make way for the new real estate project.
"I'm staying in a partially destroyed house in Khan Yunis now," he said. "But we could renovate. I refuse to be made to go to another country, Muslim or not. This is my homeland."
