Work quietly underway to implement Trump’s plan for a Gazan ‘Riviera’

Among the plans are to build ten ‘mega-projects’ in the Strip and pay half a million Gazans to emigrate.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

An American consultancy company has been working with Israeli businesspeople and others to flesh out U.S. President Donald Trump’s ideas for creating a Gazan Riviera after the Hamas-Israel war comes to an end, the Financial Times reported Monday.

According to the report, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has prepared a slide presentation together with the Israelis to show prospective funders, especially Gulf Arab states, using BCG financial models.

The proposal reportedly focuses on a plan called the “Great Trust,” which outlines ten “mega-projects,” some of them named for the wealthiest Arab leaders, in a possible bid to gain their attention and support for the massive reconstruction necessary in the Strip.

One project is a highway network called the “MBS Ring,” using the nickname of Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.

Another highway system is called “MBZ Central,” for Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the current president of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi.

There is also an “Elon Musk smart manufacturing zone,” named for the richest man in the world.

Another part of the plan includes using cash incentives to get half a million Gazan residents to emigrate.

Resettling the Gazan population in other countries was a key element of the plan Trump had announced shortly after taking office for the second time, which also included the U.S. taking control of the coastal enclave and rebuilding it as a Middle Eastern “Riviera of the Middle East,” which Trump said “could be so magnificent.”

It immediately was panned by both European and Arab leaders, who shortly afterwards announced their own plan to help Gaza rebuild.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), a respected British NPO that has always had an interest in the region, denied reports that it had a major role in the plan while saying that two staffers had participated in two calls with BCG that discussed it.

“The TBI team speaks to many different groups and organizations with postwar ‘plans’ for Gaza, but had nothing to do with the authorship of this plan,” a spokesperson said.

“The TBI document referred to is an internal TBI document looking at proposals being made by various parties covering all the different aspects of what a postwar Gaza could look like, though it is one of many such internal documents,” the spokesperson added.

TBI was founded by former British prime minister Tony Blair, who worked for over seven years as special representative of the Quartet of international powers that was founded in 2002 and whose office still works to create pro-investment policies to help the Palestinian economy in a bid to encourage peace.

BCG’s name has been linked to the Gazan Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the private American company that started providing massive amounts of aid to Gazans in May while preventing Hamas from stealing it, as the terror organization has consistently done with international aid brought in by traditional agencies such as UNRWA.

It clarified that two of its partners had provided pro bono support to help establish the organization, without receiving authorization from BCG, and the “outraged” firm disavowed their work and “exited” the pair from the company.

BCG’s disavowal came after GHF was slammed by the UN for its non-transparency of funding sources and policy to pick and choose who should receive aid, saying that this contravened international humanitarian law.

Arab Gulf StatesDonald TrumpGaza reconstruction