Peter Beaumont and Alice Speri – The Guardian Sept 1, 2025

A plan circulating in the White House to develop the “Gaza Riviera” as a string of high-tech megacities has been dismissed as an “insane” attempt to provide cover for the large-scale ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territory’s population.

On Sunday the Washington Post published a leaked prospectus for the plan, which would involve the forced displacement of Gaza’s entire population of 2 million people and put the territory into a US trusteeship for at least a decade.

Named the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust – or Great – the proposal was reportedly developed by some of the same Israelis who created and set in motion the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation with financial planning contributed by Boston Consulting Group.

Most controversially, the 38-page plan suggests what it calls “temporary relocation of all of Gaza’s more than 2 million population” – a proposal that would amount to ethnic cleansing, potentially a genocidal act.

Palestinians would be encouraged into “voluntary” departure to another country or into restricted, secure zones during reconstruction. Those who own land would be offered “a digital token” by the trust in exchange for rights to redevelop their property, to be used to finance a new life elsewhere.

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Those who stay would be housed in properties with a tiny footprint of 323 sq ft – minuscule even by the standards of many non-refugee camp homes in Gaza.

It was not clear if the plan reflects US policy, and neither the White House nor the State Department responded to the Washington Post’s request for comment. But the prospectus seem to reflect Donald Trump’s previously stated ambition to “clean out” Gaza and redevelop it.

Among critics of the leaked prospectus was Philip Grant, the executive director of Trial International, a human rights group based in Switzerland, who called the plan “a blueprint for mass deportation, marketed as development”.

“This is a blueprint for mass deportation, marketed as development. The outcome? A textbook case of international crimes on an unimaginable scale: forcible population transfer, demographic engineering, and collective punishment,” Grant said.

Trial is one of fifteen groups that have previously warned that private contractors operating in Gaza in collaboration with the Israeli government risk “aiding and abetting or otherwise being complicit in crimes under international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide”, and that they may be liable under several jurisdictions.

“Those involved in the planning and execution of such a plan – including corporate actors – could face legal liability for decades to come,” Grant said.

Even in the Israeli media the proposal invited incredulity, with a column in the left-leaning Haaretz describing it as “a Trumpian get-rich-quick scheme reliant on war crimes, AI and tourism”.

The highly fanciful prospectus – subtitled “From a Demolished Iranian Proxy to a Prosperous Abrahamic Ally”– appears to have been drawn up by people with no physical knowledge of Gaza, the politics of the Middle East or the likely challenges in attempting to rebuild the territory as a multibillion-dollar tourism and technology hub that would inevitably compete with Israel.

The scheme, described as requiring no US funding and intended to be funded by investors to the tune of $100bn, envisages a bustling port city bisected by a watercourse and bordered by up to eight leafy AI-powered high-tech megacities, apparently modelled after Saudi Arabia’s troubled Neom project.

It also envisages an “Elon Musk” manufacturing park located – without irony – on the ruins of the Erez industrial zone, which was built with Israeli investment to exploit cheap labour in the Palestinian territory and subsequently closed and destroyed by Israeli forces.

Examination of the map appears to suggest the plan would also involve the expropriation for an Israeli security buffer zone of much of Gaza’s agricultural land, which tends to be located at Gaza’s periphery close to the border with Israel.

The small print is most damning, however, making no distinction in terms of sovereignty between Gaza, Israel and Egypt, suggesting no consideration has been made for Palestinian self determination. Under the plan, Israel would maintain vaguely defined “overarching rights” over Gaza “to meet its security needs”. There would be no Palestinian state but a “Palestinian polity” which would join Trump’s Abraham Accords.

The entire language in the prospectus, and labelling of several features, appears aimed at appealing to the vanity of Trump, Musk, and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, for whom the security ring around Gaza is named.

According to the Boston Consulting Group, quoted by the Post, work on the document was not approved and two senior partners who led the financial planning had been fired.

That criticism was echoed by HA Hellyer, a senior associate at the Royal United Services Institute who suggested that the details of the plan were so clearly ludicrous that the proposal should not be taken seriously at face value.

“It’s insane. What is important is what the plan points to, and that is not a new idea: the Israel determination that there should be no Palestinian sovereignty or self determination in Gaza.

“The US has made clear since February [when details of plans for a Trump Riviera in Gaza first emerged] that they are OK with the idea of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

“The notion that this would be about ‘voluntary departure’ when Palestinians in Gaza have no choice but to be shot or starved.”

Katherine Gallagher, a senior lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, said that “any company that aligns itself with Israel – and seemingly, Trump – in a plan to forcibly transfer Palestinians from their homes in Gaza is opening itself up to significant legal liability at home and under universal jurisdiction”.

The CCR recently sued the Trump administration for records of its funding of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the private outfit overseeing aid distribution in Gaza and at whose sites hundreds of Palestinians have been killed while queuing for food.

The prospectus was leaked days after Trump held a White House meeting to discuss day-after planning for Gaza attended by the former British prime minister Tony Blair, who has contributed views on Gaza’s future to the Trump administration and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

The leaked plan was also rejected by senior Hamas official Basem Naim who said: “Gaza is not for sale.

“Gaza is part of the greater Palestinian homeland.”

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