A post-war plan for Gaza, reportedly circulating within the Trump administration, is as audacious as it is unsettling. The 38-page blueprint — dubbed the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust, or GREAT Trust — proposes a U.S.-run trusteeship lasting a decade while the enclave is transformed into a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
The vision is bold and includes plans for smart cities, high-tech factories and world-class resorts. It also gestures toward self-financing, insisting that no U.S. taxpayer funds would be required, with profits instead flowing from massive investor-backed projects. Compared with the vague, piecemeal notions circulating elsewhere, this plan attempts to weave together security, governance and economic growth in one framework. That ambition deserves credit.
But woven through the prospectus is a deeply troubling element: the relocation of Gaza’s inhabitants. The plan envisions “voluntary” departures abroad or confinement in secure internal zones during reconstruction. Palestinians would trade land rights for digital tokens, redeemable for cash, subsidies or, someday, an apartment in a rebuilt city. The plan calculates that each departure saves investors $23,000 compared with the cost of sustaining someone who stays.
That stark math betrays the plan’s weakest moral point. It risks reducing Gazans to line items on a balance sheet. When homes are destroyed, infrastructure is gone and food is scarce, the choice to “leave voluntarily” is no real choice at all. However carefully worded, any effort that pushes or coerces people from their homeland sits on the edge of illegality and will be perceived as displacement by another name.
This is not a detail to be fixed later. It is at the heart of whether any plan for Gaza can be legitimate. Palestinians cannot not be forced — directly or indirectly — into exile. Any rebuilding that disregards this principle is destined to collapse before it begins.
Yet it would be wrong to dismiss the effort outright. Compared with Israel’s far-right calls for permanent annexation, or the thin proposals from international bodies, the GREAT Trust at least tries to answer hard questions: Who will govern? How will reconstruction be paid for? What economy might sustain a future Gaza? Those are questions too many others have sidestepped.
The devastation in Gaza is enormous. Almost 90% of its housing has been destroyed, half a million people face catastrophic hunger, and a generation has been traumatized by war. No perfect plan exists, and none will. But serious attempts, even flawed ones, represent steps toward grappling with realities that cannot be wished away.
The current version of the GREAT Trust is not the solution. It risks legitimizing coercion under the cover of choice and leaves unanswered the political aspirations of Palestinians themselves. But it signals a willingness to think beyond military maps and short-term fixes. That is progress that should be built upon, not discarded.
The next step must be for U.S., Israeli, Arab and international leaders to engage with these ideas, strip away the unacceptable components of forced relocation, and build on what is workable. That effort and continued bold thinking will help Gaza avoid drift, despair and another cycle of violence.
