From the alpine summit of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the United States has presented a sweeping blueprint to rebuild the Gaza Strip, a vision Palestinians condemn as an imperialist plan imposed without their consent. The "master plan," unveiled by Presidential envoy Jared Kushner, proposes transforming the devastated coastal enclave into a glistening hub of skyscrapers and tourism within three years. President Donald Trump, framing the territory through a real estate lens, called it a "beautiful piece of property". This top-down vision, promising $25 billion in investment and 500,000 new jobs, has sparked outrage for treating Gaza as a blank slate for foreign design while ignoring the will, rights, and immediate suffering of its people.
The detailed plan, presented with artificial intelligence-generated imagery, envisions a "New Gaza" and a "New Rafah". It maps out a complete overhaul of the territory, featuring 180 skyscrapers along a "coastal tourism" zone, new industrial parks, data centers, and even a proposed airport and seaport near the Egyptian border. The reconstruction is planned in four phases, starting in Rafah and moving north, with a stated goal of raising Gaza's GDP to $10 billion. The administration insists the plan is "doable," relying on the enforcement of Hamas's demilitarization and the work of a new technocratic Palestinian committee, the NCAG, to administer daily life.
The immediate and fierce criticism centers on the complete absence of Palestinian consultation. Analysts and activists describe the proposal as an "imperial" agenda that reduces a catastrophic genocide to an "investment opportunity". "This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character," wrote Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa. Palestinian civil society leaders expressed shock, stating they were not consulted despite years of work on the ground. The plan also glaringly omits any mention of a pathway to Palestinian statehood or sovereignty, focusing instead on economic transformation under a tightly controlled administration.
Kushner described the aim as achieving "catastrophic success," moving beyond initial ideas of partitioning the territory. The plan is a core project of Trump's newly launched "Board of Peace," a controversial global body he chairs. For Trump, the plan's success is tied to his personal prestige, harnessed to what he hopes will be a legacy-defining achievement. However, the plan demands full disarmament by Hamas as a precondition, a move the group has historically rejected without political guarantees for statehood, setting the stage for a major stumbling block.
The glossy proposal stands in stark contrast to the horrific reality in Gaza. The plan would be built upon an estimated 68 million tonnes of rubble, under which thousands of bodies remain buried. Israel's military campaign has killed more than 71,500 Palestinians, damaged or destroyed almost all homes, and collapsed the economy. With famine declared, 90% of the population displaced, and humanitarian conditions "inhumane," the immediate priorities for Gazans are survival, shelter, and food, not speculative tourism towers designed an ocean away.