“At first we thought about creating a free zone, then a Hamas zone, then we said… let us plan for massive success,” said Jared Kushner, a real estate developer and son in law and adviser to the US president, during a speech at the Davos 2026 conference.
With the ease of a magician, and on the sidelines of the launch ceremony of the Peace Council, held within the framework of the 56th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and attended officially by more than 130 countries and 60 heads of state and government, Jared Kushner unveiled a comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. He called it “New Gaza”.
The plan came after a ceasefire agreement that slightly reduced the intensity of a genocidal war raging for two years at the heart of the Strip. It repeatedly reflected the “spirit” of the new US administration and its investment driven impulses, transforming a zone of annihilation into an urban and investment project and a promising economic hub, with “zero unemployment” for its residents, alongside towers and economic zones.
The first to comment on the plan was the US president himself, who defined his compass of interest in Gaza by saying: “It is a beautiful piece of land. Even at the height of the war, I kept looking at the area as a potential site for building a resort like city on the Mediterranean coast,” considering that his push for peace between Israel and Hamas “started essentially from the location”.
Yet that very location carries numerous mines for Kushner, Trump, and the plan’s supporters. These are rooted in the Middle East’s history of turning political causes into investment deals, from the so called Deal of the Century, which was framed as a regional investment project, to the Peace Council itself, which placed its first investment initiative, “New Gaza”, on the table, with a one billion dollar subscription fee per state.
So how did Kushner’s investment project begin? What are its current and deferred objectives? What impact does it have on the Palestinian cause and liberation struggles across the Arab region? To what extent is the US administration betting on the plan’s success? And finally, what did Kushner not say, but Gaza has long expressed?
Old plans in new colours
In May 2019, in an article, Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute, called on US President Donald Trump to abandon his peace plan for the Arab region. He argued that Trump’s proposal “would leave everyone losing in any case” and urged him to drop it to avoid an embarrassing failure. This prompted the president’s son in law to debate him publicly in order to “clarify” the proposal.
In that interview, Kushner, the architect of the proposal known as the Deal of the Century, stated that the operating equation was security for Israelis in exchange for improving Palestinians’ quality of life, with less emphasis on their political aspirations. When asked about a demilitarised state, Kushner replied that he avoids the term “state” altogether. “Let us not use this term.”
The president’s son in law also explained that the plan focuses on making the Palestinian areas attractive to investment, meaning foreign investment, that US contributions would be modest, and that much time would pass before Palestinians feel any improvement in living conditions.
Satloff later commented that Kushner’s insistence on calling the proposal a “peace plan project” aimed to avoid political minefields that could complicate the life of Benjamin Netanyahu. He argued that the ideas revolved around Israel, evaded Palestinian demands, and reflected a state of diplomatic cognitive dissonance.
This very diplomatic cognitive dissonance has appeared repeatedly since Trump’s return to the White House. Less than two months after his inauguration, his son in law revived old schemes through another “investment” proposal in March 2024, calling on Israel to clear the Strip of its residents by relocating them to the Negev or Egypt, then investing in Gaza’s waterfront, which he said “could be very valuable if people focus on building livelihoods”.
This was repeated in early October 2024, when Trump said in a radio interview that Gaza could be better than Monaco if rebuilt the right way. This was followed by another statement in February 2025 about the possibility of turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, an international tourist resort under US administration. He then released an AI generated video showing Gaza as a city filled with skyscrapers and luxury cars, with signs reading “Trump Gaza”.
All of this culminated in the final three months of last year, when Kushner became a central participant in a meeting on Gaza alongside former British prime minister Tony Blair. The three converged on a single idea aligned with Kushner and his father in law’s belief that the Arab Israeli conflict is “nothing more than a real estate dispute between Israelis and Palestinians”.
The new year then began with colourful engineering plans supported by presentation slides, promising the world, not Palestinians, a “New Gaza”, a new Rafah, and a new Khan Younis. Under these visions, the Strip would be transformed from a zone devastated by genocide and destruction into an economic hub, implemented in stages according to Kushner.
First, the disarmament of the resistance as a fundamental condition for reconstruction. Second, demolition for the sake of rebuilding, with Kushner stating, or threatening, “If this plan fails, we have no alternative plans,” while insisting that “everyone” will invest in the Strip.
The details are extensive. More than 180 towers along the coastline, over 100,000 permanent housing units, 200 educational centres, 75 medical facilities, and 180 cultural, professional, and religious centres. He claimed this would create over 500,000 jobs across construction, agriculture, industry, services, and the digital economy. The project allocates 25 billion dollars for public services, three billion dollars for commercial zones and loan and finance programmes, and 1.5 billion dollars for workforce rehabilitation.
Engineering the new Palestinian
What stands out about Kushner and Trump, and those around them, is their treatment of the Arab region as either an empty land devoid of people, where urban, social, and economic transformations are easily imposed, or as a population driven purely by money. This ignores the reality of Qatari cash payments that regularly entered Gaza with Israeli approval to improve living conditions, under the Israeli assumption that this would ensure calm prior to the eruption.
Satloff commented on this by saying: “Anyone familiar with the Middle East understands that the analogy between peace making and New York real estate deals collapses quickly. Most Palestinians have rejected far more tempting offers before. That is what Abba Eban meant sarcastically when he said they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
In reality, the only “opportunities” referenced by Kushner, Satloff, or even Abba Eban lie in the social and urban re engineering of the Strip. This is evident in the colour schemes that ignore the existence of dividing boundaries between Gaza and Israel and erase the Rafah crossing in favour of incorporating it under Israeli control.
It is also evident in the political, social, and demographic weight being shifted through an investment covered form of ethnic cleansing from Gaza toward Khan Younis and Rafah, emptying the north and leaving it open to Israeli control. Full dependence is then imposed on Israeli supply chains through border industrial zones, replicating settlement industrial models in the West Bank, leaving the Strip hostage to Israeli discretion.
There are also luxury yachts, investor islands, and worker compounds that establish a complete capitalist hierarchy, while Gaza and its people become subordinate components within Israel’s electronic system. This occurs alongside full exposure of above ground and underground maps and a rapid transition from cash to digital currency.
In Kushner’s maps, agricultural land appears as buffer roads that facilitate incursions and sieges. The coastal road exists under Israeli control, forcing all access to the sea through it. Fishing harbours shrink, as fishing is not seen as a profitable sector for Kushner or Trump.
Refugee camps are erased and re engineered along the lines of West Bank camps, while wealth and dollars are offered as the price for erasing national identity, cancelling refugee rights, eliminating the right of return, obscuring martyrs’ cemeteries, and ignoring thousands of prisoners.
Carnegie scholar Noor Arafeh wrote in early 2025 that Trump stripped Palestinians of their humanity through a racist and orientalist lens, denied them any agency, and portrayed them as submissive with no political aspirations. She argued that his statements reflect deep ignorance of Palestinian history and of Palestinians’ attachment to their land.
What Kushner did not say
Kushner speaks the language of money and property, but omits fundamental issues that would inevitably place him and his plan back on the same bench of failure. For him, Gaza is open land without property rights. There is no compensation for Palestinians who lost their homes, businesses, and livelihoods during the war. In his view, there was no war at all.
He speaks of disarming the resistance without addressing how. He speaks of demolition and clearance without explaining where displaced Palestinians would live during reconstruction. He speaks of funding without identifying funders, saying only: “A conference will be held in Washington in the coming weeks where we will announce many private sector contributions”.
Does he mean Israeli real estate developer Yakir Gabay, who has led organised efforts to Israelise US universities and American public opinion during the genocide?
Kushner then projects timelines and figures. Three years here, ten years there, 100 billion dollars by 2035. This again reveals a lack of understanding. United Nations agencies have estimated that rubble removal alone will take five to seven years, excluding reconstruction, and that full rebuilding would require at least a decade thereafter.
Overall, Palestinian experience with economic peace projects indicates an inevitable fate of failure. This is despite the project’s ambition to reshape Palestinian life and Gaza’s future, and despite its lack of legality as a framework of ethnic cleansing, mass displacement, unlawful appropriation, and the transformation of Palestinian society from national to purely vocational.
First, because the occupation and its right wing see nothing for Gaza but settlement, and nothing for its people but displacement. There is no reconstruction, no economic cooperation, and no material prosperity in this worldview. Experience since 1948 has taught Palestinians that freedom is the horizon of material prosperity, not the other way around.
Second, because Arab states, led by the United Arab Emirates, have announced they will not invest in Gaza’s reconstruction, having recognised the impossibility of Palestinians relinquishing their rights and demands. This points toward a prolonged conflict.
Third, because Palestinians increasingly understand that “prosperity” comes through normalisation, normalisation through another Oslo or through submission. Palestinians do not submit, not to their occupier, not to a real estate developer, not to an Arab or regional regime, and not to a new Oslo.
The Trump Kushner plan is destined to fail, despite its dynamism and vibrant colours compared to earlier political schemes. This is because they do not see Gaza through the eyes of its people. Their latest attempt merely conceals Israel’s failure to impose a solution or military rule over Gaza and its inability to eliminate Hamas. Ten years is an eternity of certainty in a region where the only constant is change.
