President Donald Trump, who had snubbed Benjamin Netanyahu when he came to ask him to annex Gaza, is reportedly preparing to take control of the Palestinian territory. While Tel Aviv prepares to annex the entirety of Mandatory Palestine and, on the contrary, Egypt and Jordan have the keys to the Palestinian Authority, a vast real estate operation worth $100 billion is being considered.
President Donald Trump convened a meeting at the White House on August 27 to gather suggestions for the future of Gaza. Attending the meeting were Vice President J.D. Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former first-term adviser Jared Kushner, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer.
No statement was issued after the meeting. However, according to the Washington Post , the Gaza Strip would be “administered by the United States for at least 10 years while it is transformed into a glittering tourist resort and a center of high-tech manufacturing and technology.” A whopping $100 billion would be invested there.
This possible operation corresponds to the vision of the “Jacksonians.” In 1830, President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) promulgated the Indian Removal Act. To end the Indian Wars, he proposed assigning them reservations rather than continuing to massacre them. The removal of the Indians was particularly deadly for the Cherokees (the “Trail of Tears” episode), but they accepted this form of peace, while almost all other Indian tribes rejected it. Two centuries later, only the Cherokee tribe has become rich and integrated, while all other tribes have been marginalized. Without a doubt, Jackson’s method succeeded in ending the genocide of the Indians, but at what cost?
Trump’s unfolding plan is as shocking to Palestinians as Jackson’s was to the Cherokee, but it offers a solution where no one else has one. Will it satisfy Palestinians, who have fought for their rights for generations,? International law states that no people may be expelled from their own land. The United Nations General Assembly has consistently guaranteed the right of return of those forcibly expelled in 1948—UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (December 11, 1948) and UN Security Council Resolution 237 (June 14, 1967). Seven years ago, Palestinian civilians organized the “March of Return.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) fired on a peaceful crowd, killing at least 120 people and wounding 4,000. It is obviously illusory to believe that such a people will easily rally to this project.
The White House meeting participants also considered paying $23,000 per person to any family that agreed to go into exile. Contacts have already been made with Libya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Indonesia, and Somaliland, although none of these states have confirmed this. The Trump team is considering voluntarily displacing a quarter of Gaza’s population in this way.
According to the Financial Times , the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) held joint working meetings on the Gaza Riviera project, called The Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust (GREAT* Trust). It was during these preparatory meetings that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) project was born. During the summer, this Swiss-registered foundation distributed humanitarian aid in Gaza in place of the occupation authority, the United Nations, the International Red Cross, and various humanitarian organizations. This certainly resulted in the circumvention of Hamas, but also in the assassination by the IDF of nearly a thousand civilians seeking food aid. The GHF scandal was unanimously condemned, including by prominent Jewish Israeli figures. In practice, the GHF was created by the Mikveh Yisrael Forum, which brought together Yotam HaCohen, a strategic advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu and son of former General Gershon HaCohen; Liran Tankman, a former intelligence officer turned high-tech executive; and US-Israeli venture capitalist Michael Eisenberg. Most of the Mikveh Yisrael Forum’s leaders joined the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Ghassan Alian, in their belief that the Netanyahu government was doing nothing to help Gazans and that it was up to the Israelis to take the initiative. The “Foundation” was reportedly funded to the tune of $100 million by a European state whose identity remains secret.
TRIAL International, a Swiss-based NGO, has filed two legal submissions asking Swiss authorities to investigate the GHF’s compliance with Swiss law and international humanitarian law. The central issue raised by TRIAL International is whether humanitarian organizations can use private military companies. Indeed, early on, GHF’s executive director, former U.S. Marine Jake Wood, resigned. The “Foundation” then employed the services of Philip F. Reilly and his company Safe Reach Solutions. Reilly is a former soldier in the U.S. 7th Special Forces Group, which focused on counter-narcotics missions in Latin America. He went on to become head of the CIA’s paramilitary branch, then known as the Special Activities Division but later renamed the Special Activities Center. He was the CIA’s Afghan station chief around 2008 and 2009, as well as the chief of operations for the agency’s Counterterrorism Mission Center, which led the agency’s highly controversial drone strike program during the War on Terror. He then moved to the private sector as senior vice president of special activities for the private military contractor Constellis, owner of the mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater. Finally, he worked for another private military, Orbis. While it’s true that the IDF didn’t kill the Palestinian civilians who came looking for food, Philip F. Reilly’s men did.
The project for the future of Gaza, according to its real estate developers (the three professionals Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, and Steve Witkoff), is worthy of Dubai. Many transnational corporations have already joined forces.
To facilitate the regroupment of Gazans, the Revisionist Zionist government of Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the creation of a tent city for 600,000 people in Rafa. They would have access to food and hospitals, but would not be able to leave.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said at a conference on Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank on May 14: “Civilians will be sent south to a humanitarian zone, and from there they will begin to leave in large numbers for third countries.”
The Prime Minister himself finally made his decision on August 13 on i24News in Hebrew. He claimed a “historical and spiritual mission” and assured that he is “very” attached to the vision of a “Greater Israel.” At 75, he publicly claims to be his father’s mentor, Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of “revisionist Zionism.”
Simultaneously, the Knesset passed a non-binding law on July 23, by a vote of 71 to 13, calling on the government to annex the West Bank before new permanent members of the UN Security Council fully recognize the State of Palestine.
Meanwhile, the IDF reports that 618 settler attacks were recorded in the West Bank in 2024, compared to 404 in the first half of 2025.
Republican Mike Johnson, Speaker of the U.S. House, has expressed support for annexation. He visited the settlement of Ariel in early August 2025 and stated that he believed “Judea and Samaria” belonged to the Jewish people and expressed support for extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. This was the first time that a US official of this level had visited Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Trump administration is cautiously staying away from this movement for the time being, especially since it is focusing all its efforts on strengthening the Abraham Accords with Arab states.
Israeli public opinion, for its part, according to a survey conducted in December 2024 by the Institute for National Security Studies, is 34% against annexing Palestinian territories, 21% support annexing existing settlements, and 21% support annexing everything.
For their part, Egypt and Jordan, unwilling to believe it, continue to train hundreds of young Palestinians loyal to Fatah to form a 10,000-strong private security force to bring the Palestinian Authority to power in Gaza. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and France plan to fully recognize the State of Palestine at the UN General Assembly, and the latter is preparing its declaration of independence.
Main sources:
“אמון באישיםובמוסדות” , Institute for National Security Studies , December 2024.
“אור בקצה המנהרה: לקראת מערכה אזרחית”, יותם הכה in Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Military Thought, issue 41, July 2024.
“ New Gaza Aid Plan, Bypassing UN and Billed as Neutral, Originated in Israel ”, Patrick Kingsley, Ronen Bergman & Natan Odenheimer, The New York Times , May 24, 2025.
“ Israelis, a former CIA official and $100M: The real players in the Gaza aid scheme ”, Israel Hayom , Erez Linn May 25, 2025.
“ Tony Blair’s staff took part in ‘Gaza Riviera’ project with BCG ”, Financial Times , July 7, 2025.
“ Tony Blair thinktank worked with project developing ‘Trump Riviera’ Gaza plan ”, Ben Quinn, The Guardian , July 7, 2025.
“ Israeli Official: Netanyahu Supports Plan to Concentrate Gazans Into ‘Humanitarian City’ ”, Liza Rozovsky, Haaretz , July 8, 2025
“ Exclusive: Proposal outlines large-scale ‘Humanitarian Transit Areas’ for Palestinians in Gaza ”, Jonathan Landay & Aram Roston, Reuters, July 11, 2025.
“ Boston Consulting Group modeled plan to ‘relocate Palestinians’ from Gaza to Somalia ,” Middle East Eye , August 7, 2025.
“ Egypt Is Training Palestinian Forces to Take Over Postwar Gaza ”, Summer Said & Benoit Faucon, The Wall Street Journal , August 27, 2025.
