from The New York Magazine (paywalled so I posted the entire article w/ byline)
On January 22, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jared Kushner presented a “Master Plan” for the future of Gaza. Kushner’s slideshow featured glossy images of coastal skyscrapers, a new tourism district with 180 towers, an airport, a seaport, and industrial complex zones. A phased reconstruction timeline promised to transform “New Rafah” and “New Gaza” into modern metropolises. “In the Middle East, they build cities like this in three years,” Kushner said. “This is very doable.” Gaza’s GDP, he claimed, would exceed $10 billion by 2035; more than half a million jobs would be created; private investment for utilities and public services would reach at least $25 billion. New Rafah alone would contain more than 100,000 housing units; 200 education centers; 180 cultural, religious, and vocational institutions; and 75 medical facilities.
The Master Plan was shared as part of the establishment of President Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace. An earlier variation of the plan envisioned the construction of artificial islands with luxury resorts offshore — part of a broader ambition for what has been dubbed the “Gaza Riviera.” Rendered in artificial-intelligence graphics, skyscrapers hovered like a vision overlooking the coastline where decades of blockade and war have reduced seaside infrastructure to rubble.
Tellingly, the Davos slideshow just briefly mentioned basic services like water, electricity, and sewage for Palestinians in war-decimated Gaza. Kushner’s presentation mentions Palestinians in the context of “demilitarization principles,” claiming this process will be “led by Palestinians, internationally verified.” The Palestinian public were not involved, not even consulted, in the drafting of these visions. Almost every decision about where they will live, how they will move, and what kind of life they may rebuild was made without them. “From the private sector,” Kushner added, “there will be amazing investment opportunities.”
The reality on the ground in Gaza could not be further removed from these fantasies. The Master Plan does not address how to remove the estimated thousands of tons of unexploded ordnance embedded across the territory or the 61 million metric tons of debris that the U.N. estimates must be cleared before Gaza can begin rebuilding for the long term. Some 80 percent of Gaza’s buildings are destroyed or damaged, forcing much of the population to live in makeshift tents. The territory’s drinkable water is polluted, its agricultural sector all but wiped out. There are thousands of amputees in need of prosthetics and rehabilitation, thousands with permanent hearing damage, thousands of burn cases, and thousands requiring specialist treatment outside Gaza who are unable to leave.
Nour Alsaqqa, a media and communications officer in Gaza, has followed the Board of Peace’s proposals from afar. So has nearly everyone else she knows in the territory — they talk about it on their donkey carts (the dominant form of transportation now that fuel is scarce), at vegetable stalls, in the ubiquitous camps that stretch across acres of devastation. Seven months into the cease-fire that went into effect in October, violence is still a daily reality. “We’ve gone from a hundred people killed a day to a few killed a day,” she said, “which is considered okay.” Drones menace the remaining buildings. Warships advance suddenly toward the shore without warning. Alsaqqa, 26 years old, moves through hospitals and displacement camps for work. She has lived in a rented apartment with seven family members since their home was destroyed. In April, she was on her way to work when the street she had just been walking on was bombed. “You’re never safe,” she said. “It’s just a matter of luck.”
Near-daily aid convoys are permitted, but they have largely been insufficient to sustain the population’s basic needs. Batteries for solar panels, for example, the primary source of electricity during two years of fuel scarcity, are banned from entering the Strip. Alsaqqa told me that the existing batteries are worn out and, if found, prohibitively expensive. There are severe shortages of essential medications for chronic diseases. Shelter materials are blocked, as is water and sanitation equipment. She told me about a displacement camp that collapsed in winter when it rained; it had not included a single bathroom, partly because the sewage system is largely destroyed. The only thing being built in Gaza right now, Alsaqqa said, is more tents.
The map that preoccupies Gazans does not feature artificial islands but rather the Yellow Line, a physical barrier that demarcates where people can live. The line has been advancing incrementally, unstoppably, west into the Strip, pushing Gazans into an ever-narrower band between the sea and a wasteland buffer zone. More than 50 percent of Gaza’s territory is currently inaccessible to Palestinians.
From Alsaqqa’s perspective, it’s obvious that the Board of Peace’s proposals aren’t meant to restore life in Gaza. Rather, they serve interests that are mostly American, Israeli, and Gulf in character. “The talk of the hour now is fuel, oil, the prices of goods,” she said. “Because people need to survive.”
As far-fetched and out of touch as the Master Plan may seem, it is already being presented to donor countries and investors as reference points for reconstruction priorities. This is not to say that many believe the Master Plan or the Gaza Riviera will magically materialize in the next few years or even decades. In fact, the Financial Times reported earlier in May that the Board’s official fund has zero money in it.
Rather, the Board’s political and economic vision for Gaza is quietly embedded, alongside the AI-generated mirages, in the Master Plan, under which Gaza’s economy will exist only within stifling, controllable channels. There is a cursory suggestion its people will have rights, protections, or autonomy. Gaza, as planned, will be a peripheral appendage to Greater Israel, a captive population toiling for low wages and a meager existence, following a pattern that has long been established in the West Bank. I asked Sara Roy, an associate at Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, what the U.S. and Israel hoped to accomplish with their development plan. “It’s about eliminating a Palestinian presence in Gaza,” she said, “eliminating Gaza as the center of resistance, and about ending the whole Palestinian political project to which Gaza is the key.”
Over the past several months, I spoke with U.S. officials, legal scholars, and political analysts to understand the hierarchy of power within the Board of Peace and how its decisions are being made. It’s become clear to me that there has never been a multilateral organization quite like this one, created out of thin air.
The Board of Peace is built around several bodies. There are the member states and an executive board composed of Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, World Bank Group president Ajay Banga, former British prime minister Tony Blair, Trump-administration special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, private-equity titan Marc Rowan, outgoing principal deputy national security advisor Robert Gabriel Jr., real-estate attorney Martin Edelman, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. Then there’s a Gaza executive board, which includes representatives from Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, and the UAE. Finally, there is the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza — a Palestinian technocratic body. Above them all is the chair, President Donald Trump.
“The authority all resides in the chair,” Dennis Ross, a former U.S. Middle East peace envoy who served across multiple administrations, told me over email. Zaha Hassan, a human-rights lawyer and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me, “It’s the chairman, not the member states, that holds power over pretty much every decision in and from the Board of Peace, including over funding issues and where the money goes, and whose names are on account.” The U.S. joined the Board through an executive order signed by Trump, who invoked a federal statute that normally requires congressional backing for American participation in international institutions. The Board’s charter has not been approved by the Senate to move forward as a treaty, and Congress has not passed legislation in support of the U.S. involvement in the Board. The Board as an organization has no permanent relationship to any durable U.S. or international institution, as the U.N. Security Council’s endorsement is set to expire at the end of next year.
The U.S., which sits on the Board as one member among others, carries little weight. “It appears to be a personal project of the president,” Hassan said. There’s no sunset clause on Trump’s chairmanship of the Board or any mechanism to transfer authority to a successor, which he hasn’t shown any intention of doing. He will likely remain chairman even when he’s no longer president, assuming he leaves office after his term is up. The next administration would have no viable method to redirect funds, significantly restructure the Board, or undo the plans already set in motion. Even out of office, Trump could be in control of one of the most consequential redevelopment operations in the modern Middle East.
The Board’s charter does not mention the word Gaza once. The stated mission comes with a much broader ambition: to promote stability, restore governance, and secure peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict — anywhere. Gaza seems to be merely the Board’s first deployment. Under its own logic, the three active military fronts currently disrupting the Middle East — Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran — are theaters of war that should be resolved by the Board, if only they were not being waged by two Board members, the U.S. and Israel. Trump’s world-straddling dominance is a fitting arrangement for the new order being assembled from the wreckage of Gaza, which has undermined the international law housed in toothless institutions like the U.N. The Board of Peace is the ultimate emblem of the erosion of norms that once held the line between catastrophe and its exploitation.
Take the economic proposals in the Master Plan, which are still in a nebulous phase. The placement of industrial zones along the Israeli border sharpens Palestinian dependence on Israel. Local production would be tethered to Israeli electricity grids and supply chains, which may reduce short-term costs but in the long run would eliminate any prospect of economic sovereignty. The Master Plan essentially envisions a bifurcated system in which speculative, largely foreign investments — tourism enclaves, offshore islands, donor-backed megaprojects — coexist with a constrained local economy that provides the labor but captures little of the value. Growth figures may rise on paper, but they will not translate into broad-based prosperity. In this sense, the plan does not aim to build a self-sustaining local economy at all. This pattern has long existed in the West Bank, where Palestinian labor is integrated into the Israeli economy, generating income without autonomy. (In response to questions, a Board of Peace spokesperson said the construction plans were still being developed, and final locations of economic zones would not be determined until there can be “detailed analysis on the ground.” The spokesperson added that “detailed technical work” is in progress to address debris, rubble, and unexploded ordnance.)
The plan would also fundamentally alter Gaza’s geographic and demographic identity. Gaza City, formerly home to roughly 600,000 people and the territory’s historic political, cultural, and economic center, is largely absent from the reconstruction agenda. According to the plan, investment is being flowed through southern Gaza, toward Khan Younis and Rafah. Housing, employment, and civil services would presumably follow. Under the Board of Peace’s economic logic, staying in the north, including where Gaza City is, will be untenable, which is already facilitating the establishment of Israeli military zones there.
These radical changes would not be possible without the total absence of broad Palestinian public input. Members of the NCAG have not yet been allowed to enter Gaza, the territory which they’re supposed to be administrating under the Board’s authority. The committee will reportedly consist of 15 Palestinians (only 12 are listed on the NCAG’s site so far) who are required to be completely apolitical. They may coordinate logistics and such, but they may not advocate for political outcomes, assert national claims, invoke international law, or behave in any way that resembles governance on behalf of a political constituency.
The Board of Peace spokesperson denied that Palestinians have been excluded from the reconstruction plans, stating that the NCAG “will make decisions about the nature of reconstruction in Gaza, with support from the Board and the High Representative.” Palestinian factions, including Hamas, reportedly contributed to the process of choosing NCAG members, but they were never democratically elected by any Palestinian consensus and they enjoy no public support. I reached out to two Palestinian officials who are part of the new technocratic committee with questions about their roles and future governance plans. Neither responded.
Neither the Board nor its executives, meanwhile, face such constraints. They will make geopolitical decisions and strike economic relationships that will shape the territory for decades. Their mandate decides who is permitted entry into Gaza, what gets built, how land is organized, which Palestinian actors are legitimized and which are not. The existence of the Board amounts to a total break from post-conflict reconstruction conventions developed in league with the U.N. and other internationally recognized bodies.
Decisions will ultimately be made “by Americans in very, very closed consultations with the Israelis,” Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at Quincy Institute, told me. Jasmine El-Gamal, a former Pentagon Middle East adviser and CEO of Averos Strategies, noted that operational authority will sit “largely with Israel,” which controls the security and military environment on the ground. Israel will also determine who qualifies for humanitarian relief and reconstruction benefits, and therefore decide who can stay and who will be pressured to leave.
If the Board intends to redevelop Gaza into skyscrapers and beach resorts rather than rebuild Palestinian homes and neighborhoods, it will need legal control over the land on which those projects would be built. That control runs through the Palestinian Authority, which holds the land registry and records of Palestinian ownership to these lands and properties. “Investors and developers would need access to the PA’s land records to obtain legal rights to build in Gaza,” Hassan told me. Its role, as planned, is not to govern or represent but to provide the legal and financial infrastructure necessary for the transfer of Palestinian land to its future inhabitants, who might not be Palestinians, according to Hassan. The resolution of establishing the Board states that the NCAG “shall not discriminate in favor of or against any person on the basis of sex, race, color, language, religion, ethnic, or social origin.” This language opens the door to the entry of non-Palestinians into Gaza, including the return of Israeli and Jewish settlers who lived in Gaza before 2005, Hassan explained to me.
Meanwhile, the Yellow Line is pushing people out of areas designated as military zones or rendered uninhabitable while restricting their access to aid. Those who leave to survive lose access to their homes. Once land is cleared, those homes risk being classified as abandoned property, a practice that already happens with regularity. The vetting process, which has not been made public and is under complete Israeli control, then determines who among the internally displaced is permitted to return and to what. Hassan describes this as the “West Bankification of Gaza”— a policy of restricting access to necessities, displacing populations by pressure or force, claiming the land they leave behind, and controlling return through administrative criteria.
A senior U.S. adviser to the president told me the ideal outcome is basically this: “Hamas disarms, Gaza police would stand up, the International Stabilization Force shows up, and the IDF gets the hell out of there.”
Nickolay Mladenov, who serves as the high representative for Gaza of the Board of Peace, introduced what he called a 15-point road map to implement the Trump administration’s Gaza peace plan. “This is a sequencing mechanism designed to ensure fair implementation,” Mladenov said in a video briefing before the U.N. Security Council on May 21. But he said Hamas’s opposition to the road map remains a massive obstacle. Mladenov’s plan also outlines that reconstruction financing would not move forward in any area where parallel armed groups remained active. A Board of Peace spokesperson echoed that progress has “slowed” and that NCAG members have not been able to enter Gaza because of “the refusal of Hamas negotiators to commit to the road map” and decommission of weapons. In reality, no steps have even been taken to address major security conundrums, El-Gamal told me, and the movement of the Yellow Line continues apace.
The broader attempt at regional stability has been complicated by the war in Iran. The Gulf states’ involvement in Gaza’s rebuilding efforts has often been misread as humanitarian investment. It actually is a transaction in which reconstruction pledges purchase political standing in an ever-shifting evolving Middle East — a bargain for influence over the reconstruction economy, normalization with Israel that doesn’t require the formal ceremony of the Abraham Accords, and positioning in a new regional order assembled around American brokerage. Gulf states were betting that participating in the Board would cost less politically, financially, and reputationally than standing outside it.
But that logic was fractured as soon as the U.S. conducted its joint strikes with Israel on Iran in February without consulting their ostensible allies. “If you are a Gulf country that just gave a billion dollars because you wanted to see stability in the Middle East,” Hassan said, “and you can’t even now secure your own airspace, how do you feel about the Board of Peace at that point?”
Elgindy of the Quincy Institute added, “Washington cannot clearly guarantee their security right now. Most Gulf states are likely reconsidering the dependence on American security architecture.”
All of this helps explain why the Board has struggled to secure funds. The pledged amounts from the Gulf and other states for Gaza’s rebuilding are largely insignificant compared to the estimated costs of reconstruction, which are about $70 billion to $100 billion. What has been pledged is, as Elgindy told me, “a tiny fraction of what is actually needed. This is just commitments, not delivering.” Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are giving their contributions over multiple years, not as a single transfer. The Saudis, Dennis Ross noted, appear to have conditioned meaningful involvement on both Hamas disarmament and Israeli withdrawal. Neither has happened.
In previous military campaigns in Gaza, Israel has repeatedly destroyed what was rebuilt. “There is zero accountability for Israel,” Noura Erakat, a human-rights attorney and a professor at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, said. What remained of the Rafah airport, the seaport project, and thousands of homes, businesses, and civilian infrastructure rebuilt after the 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021 campaigns were destroyed again in subsequent operations. “How many countries,” Roy asked, “especially now after the Iran war, are going to contribute billions to build schools, hospitals, and infrastructure in Gaza under the risk of it being destroyed again?”
For decades, Palestinians have struggled to establish a unified political body capable of representing them across factions and geography. The institutional severing of Gaza from the West Bank underscores why any viable path to Palestinian statehood has always depended on the political and territorial integration of the two. “The main danger, from a Palestinian and regional perspective, is the splitting of Gaza and the West Bank into two separate governing bodies not in sync with one another,” Jasmine El-Gamal told me. She said the Board of Peace’s proposals risk “institutionalizing Palestinian fragmentation” — in other words, normalizing external trusteeship over Gaza and undermining the Palestinian Authority as the national governing body.
Since October 7, 2023, Hamas has lost almost its entire leadership — both from the military class and the political division — abroad as well as in Gaza. Fatah has been absent from Gaza’s political life for nearly two decades. Independent and leftist factions have been exiled, imprisoned, or politically diminished. There is no functioning Palestinian Legislative Council. The Palestine Liberation Organization’s representative institutions have atrophied. The Palestinian Authority, which commands parts of the West Bank in a narrow administrative capacity, has endorsed a framework that explicitly strips it of any decision-making role.
The Board of Peace appears into this vacuum with unmistakable intentions. Netanyahu’s coalition, Elgindy argued, is not only at war with the people of Gaza: “They are at war with the concept of a Palestinian nation.” Hassan said, “You have to suspend your knowledge of everything in the history of Israel’s relationship to Palestinians and to the land and to the occupied territories in order to believe that there is any hope that this Board of Peace is going to actually deliver Palestinian reconstruction and recovery. It was not built for that purpose.” A Board of Peace spokesperson denied that the Board does not share the end goal of Palestinian statehood, stating that after the Palestinian Authority completes reforms, as outlined by the U.N. Security Council, and Gaza redevelopment has “advanced,” “conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
Roy, who went to Gaza for the first time in the mid-1980s as a graduate student and spent time forging relationships with Israeli officials there, came away with the understanding that Gaza was never peripheral to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was always at the center of Israel’s strategic calculation about Palestinian statehood, precisely because it was the center of Palestinian political resistance. The imperative she heard from Israeli officials across multiple visits and across decades was the same: to preclude the emergence of a Palestinian state, of which Gaza would be a key factor. According to Roy, the officials said that economic development would lay “the groundwork for a political state,” and they would “never allow a state to be established.”
I hold my greatest fears for when the Iran war settles, when the Board transitions from being a political concept into a practical institution with contractors, timelines, approved vendor lists, permitting authorities, and security coordination agreements, which will produce, imperceptibly and undramatically, a new set of facts on the ground that arrive before any political resolution and make such a resolution progressively harder to imagine. The pattern is nearly identical to how the settlement enterprise worked in the West Bank: one road, one water pump, at a time, until it accumulated into a map entrenched so deeply that undoing it requires dismantling an entire administrative reality built across decades.
I think about what it costs us, the Palestinians, dispossessed, blockaded, bombed, and dispossessed again, every time we’re told that a new framework designed to administer our future without our participation represents a new beginning. We danced every time we saw a light at the end of the tunnel, only to realize, every single time, it was the executioner’s candle. We’re expected to welcome the Board’s reconstruction agenda, but reconstruction will not dismantle the ways a genocide is meant to persist.
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