The Trump administration is currently discussing the so-called Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation (GREAT) Trust plan that projects a futuristic vision for the enclave after Israel’s ongoing war. The plan builds on President Donald Trump’s controversial February 4, 2025 remarks that the United States would “take over” Gaza and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” after relocating its more than two million inhabitants to other countries. Although the White House walked back those comments the next day, the new GREAT Trust plan similarly proposes the “voluntary” relocation of Gaza’s population and envisions a ten-year period of US governance, extensive development and investment programs, and the construction of six to eight new cities across the Strip.
The plan has been devised by some of the same Israelis who founded the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), with US support, to manage aid delivery to Gaza’s displaced population. Over recent months, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed at GHF’s four distribution centers in the southern Strip, while famine and starvation grip the enclave. The GREAT Trust now proposes to give GHF responsibility for future aid and shelter to the destitute population of Gaza, underscoring the cynicism and carelessness behind the proposal.
Arab Center Washington DC asked its analysts to provide their perspectives on the plan. Their responses are below.
Is There Buy-in in the Gulf?
Imad K. Harb, Director of Research and Analysis
There is no question that different allusions and signals used in the GREAT Trust plan aim to secure its acceptance by the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The plan’s glitzy designs borrow from major architectural feats and structures in Gulf cities like Riyadh, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha as models for housing and business enterprises in the proposed cities of the ‘new’ Gaza. The two major roads proposed in the plan—the “MBS Ring Road” and the “MBZ Central Highway”—are respectively named for Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed. The plan highlights the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), which originates in the UAE and traverses the Arabian Peninsula to the Mediterranean, as a flagship project for those ‘smart enough’ to recognize an opportunity. The plan deploys such imagery and promises to whet the appetite of Gulf political and economic elites to both endorse and invest in it.
The plan specifies that the venture will not depend on donations but on external investment. Although opportunities do exist for private investors and public-private partnerships, the large sums required will almost certainly have to come from the Gulf states. The plan will not depend on US public funds, given that the Trump administration has largely dismantled foreign aid programs and agencies. Neither are European states or individual investors likely to be major contributors. Russia faces serious economic constraints, and China is unlikely to rush into supporting what will essentially be a US-Israeli venture. In other words, the only significant funders will be the Gulf countries—if they choose to underwrite a scheme that effectively erases the question of Palestine, a disastrous outcome no matter how appealing the incentives might appear.
Israeli Dismantlement of Gaza?
Khalil E. Jahshan, Executive Director
The so-called GREAT Trust, the chaotic and sophomoric 38-page document discussed at the White House meeting on August 27, 2025, is not, as its authors describe it, a plan for the reconstitution, economic acceleration, and transformation of the Gaza Strip, or a blueprint for governing the decimated territory the day after the guns fall silent. Instead, even a cursory reading shows it to be a fraudulent scheme designed to shield Israel from the consequences of its criminal and disastrous policies over the past 23 months, which have trapped it in the most perilous existential crisis of its 77-year-long history. The plan is also meant to generate financial gains for the likes of the Boston Consulting Group, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, and their financial backers, including President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Unfortunately, some policy analysts have fallen into the trap the authors embedded in the document, assuming that this latest version of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza is an “improved” edition of the original “Trump Riviera” proposal of February 4, 2025. In fact, the “voluntary”—rather than total and forced—displacement of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants offers nothing more than retail ethnic cleansing instead of the wholesale process suggested earlier. Cash bonuses and allowances for housing and food dangled before impoverished Gazans do not render this self-serving plan humane by any rational standard.
US envoy Steve Witkoff referred to the document as a “very comprehensive plan” that is robust and well meaning, reflecting President Trump’s supposed humanitarian motives. In reality, the plan is anything but well-meaning toward Palestinians in Gaza, who face a foreign trusteeship imposed on them for at least ten years without their consent. Vague promises of turning Gaza into “a tourism resort, and a high-tech manufacturing and technology hub” do nothing to enhance Palestinian national aspirations for self-determination on their own land. Instead, these objectives primarily reward Israel—economically and politically—for failing to achieve the objectives of its genocidal war against Gaza, while setting back the Palestinian march to freedom and independence from foreign occupation.
The Cynical Primacy Given to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
Yousef Munayyer, Head of the Palestine/Israel Program and Senior Fellow
Much like the euphemistically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the GREAT Trust plan is anything but great. Just like the GHF, the Trump administration’s proposal appears to have been concocted by consulting firms eager to cash in on outside money, with little knowledge of the region or the Gaza Strip, no local buy-in, and no regard to the interests or views of the people of Gaza. At best, the plan has zero chance of being implemented.
Despite the glossy brochure, this poorly concocted plan is full of red flags—chief among them the role played by the GHF. The Foundation was created not to serve the people of Gaza, who are being subjected to Israeli genocide, but rather to facilitate Israel’s military goals of ethnic cleansing. It supplanted existing aid delivery systems which, despite overwhelming need, managed aid distribution far more effectively. The GHF replaced them with “bait-and-kill” sites that have become epicenters of massacres of aid seekers. Whistleblowers have documented the gruesome ways in which the Israeli military and GHF contractors have gunned down desperate Palestinians at these distribution points.
Trump’s GREAT Trust plan does not even merit being called mediocre. Instead, it deserves the same ridicule and contempt as the GHF, a murderous and profit-driven scheme that cloaks itself in humanitarianism while cynically exploiting human need and destitution.
The Bet on Defeating Hamas and Securing Palestinian Acceptance
Assal Rad, Non-resident Fellow
The GREAT Trust proposal for Gaza is not only deeply flawed, but also emblematic of a broader imperial mindset in which external powers seek to dictate the future of an occupied people without their participation. The core issue is that the proposal excludes Palestinians from planning their own future, stripping them of their agency and rights under international law. It envisions a Gaza managed and reconstructed by outside actors—many of whom have been complicit in its destruction—while Palestinians themselves are treated as obstacles rather than decision-makers. This is not peacebuilding; it is colonialism repackaged in the language of reconstruction.
Equally troubling is that the plan contains no mechanism of accountability for the perpetrators of heinous crimes against humanity. As the global consensus grows regarding Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, any future initiative for Palestinians must demand justice for the atrocities committed. Framed as a “humanitarian” project, the GREAT Trust plan masks the violence underpinning it. The discourse of “relocation” and “resettlement”—dutifully echoed by much of the Western media—ignores the reality that Israel is systematically demolishing Gaza. Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu, have openly declared their intent to destroy Palestinian homes to prevent return. Forcibly displacing Palestinians is ethnic cleansing, and bringing about the physical destruction of a people constitutes genocide under international law.
The notion of “defeating Hamas” is equally misleading. It reduces the struggle for Palestinian liberation to one group, ignoring the root causes of resistance such as occupation and apartheid. No amount of bombing can erase an idea born of decades of struggle. Even Israeli analysts acknowledge the futility of eradicating every Hamas fighter, while the Biden administration conceded at the end of its own term that the organization had already replenished its ranks to replace those that Israel had killed. Israel’s rejection of Palestinian governance, including that of the Palestinian Authority, demonstrates the plan’s detachment from the principle of self-determination. No externally imposed authority can be legitimate without Palestinian consent. As long as Palestinians are denied their rights, resistance will persist.
The US-Israel Gaza Control and Security Scheme
Annelle Sheline, Non-resident Senior Fellow; Quincy Institute Research Fellow
The AI-generated fantasy of the GREAT Trust plan erases Palestinians, as well as Gaza’s historic significance, even as it purports to rehabilitate the territory as part of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) route—a project rooted in former National Security Council Middle East Coordinator Brett McGurk’s deep antagonism toward Iran and unconditional support for Zionism.
The entire premise of the plan rests on denying Palestinian agency. This replicates the long-standing Israeli paradigm whereby any Palestinian action—from firing a rocket to marching in peaceful protest—is construed as a threat to Israeli security, which must always be prioritized above all else. The document repeatedly insists that Israel will “continue to maintain responsibility for overall security” (i.e. bomb Gaza at will). Even the imagined end state of a supposedly self-governing Gaza would not enjoy autonomy, since Israel would still have to approve any “long term security arrangements.”
If this sounds suspiciously like the occupied West Bank, that is intentional. The plan portrays the West Bank as a success, in contrast to Gaza. For example, it envisions a police-to-civilian ratio modeled on the West Bank, noting: “The ratio of police to civilians is 0.005 to align with West Bank ratios and are [sic] significantly higher than 0.003 UN average.” This framing suggests that the delegitimized Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is a model worth emulating—although arguably only from Israel’s perspective.
One telling slide in the plan even attributes “Gaza’s ongoing insurgency” to “urban design.” Such claims are symptoms of Israel’s steadfast refusal to recognize the obvious: as long as the occupation persists, Israel will face so-called “security threats” from Palestinians—and increasingly, scrutiny and resistance from people of conscience around the world.
The views expressed in this publication are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Shutterstock/Anas Mohammed
