Luxury coastal developments. High-rises. Industrial zones. A free-market economy. Tourism hubs.
US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s presentation on the future of Gaza at the Davos World Economic Forum earlier this week was historical distortion masquerading as a business pitch for investors.
In Kushner’s nine-minute-long presentation, the battered Strip was reduced to euphemisms, with “security,” “de-escalation,” and “the people of Gaza” obfuscating the Israeli occupation, the genocide in Gaza, and even the existence of Palestine’s indigenous population.
Kushner, a real-estate developer and senior US adviser, launched what he described as a multi-phase reconstruction blueprint for the Gaza Strip as part of the new Board of Peace chaired by Trump.
The plan envisions 180 coastal skyscrapers, a port, an airport, industrial and data centres, and residential areas encircled with expansive parks, agriculture, and sports facilities, all built on Gaza’s ruins and massive mass graves.
It would begin with phase one in south Gaza to be followed by three phases in the north.
The Israeli war on Gaza since October 2023 was summarised in one slide, obfuscating 90,000 tons of munitions, 60 million tons of rubble, and tens of thousands of fatalities and praising the US-brokered “ceasefire” which released the Israeli hostages and promised the entry of “historic” humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Kushner outlined his number one priority – “security” and the laying down of arms by resistance movements, which he called “demilitarisation.”
“Without security nobody is going to make investments. We need investments in order to start giving jobs,” he said. “For a long time, 85 per cent of Gaza’s GDP has been aid. It is not sustainable, it does not give these people dignity, it doesn’t give them hope.”
Kushner proclaimed that Gaza’s humanitarian needs have been fully met since the ceasefire on 29 September last year, and he shared a slide on the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, the transitional technocratic body tasked with running everyday life in the Strip, which appeared backwards in an Arabic translation.
Kushner said that he had worked out the multi-phased Gaza “masterplan” with Israeli-Cypriot billionaire and real-estate developer Yakir Gabay.
“In the Middle East they build cities like this for two to three million people in three years, so this is very doable,” he added.
Beginning with Rafah, which the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have destroyed and razed to the ground, the plan envisions constructing over 100,000 housing units, educational centres, and medical facilities.
“And then New Gaza,” he said, pointing to a glass box and Singapore and Dubai-style skyscrapers. “It could be a hope, it could be a destination and have a lot of industry and really be a place where people there can thrive and have great employment,” he said.
The slides promised $10 billion in expected GDP in 10 years, over 500,000 jobs and $25 billion in investment, pending “security and governance.”
Kushner proclaimed that there “is no plan B” for Gaza.
His map featured an empty strip of land running along the Egyptian-Israeli border. It appeared to mark what Trump’s 20-point peace plan refers to as the “security perimeter” where Israeli forces will remain “until Gaza is properly secure.”
Kushner’s presentation was made during a signing ceremony for Trump’s new Board of Peace, a body that was originally established to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza but now has a far broader mandate that is widely seen by critics as replacing the United Nations.
For many observers, and most poignantly for Palestinians whose homes, streets, and cities have been smashed to rubble, the presentation looked less like a peace plan and more like a real-estate fantasy divorced from the political and humanitarian realities on the ground.
Critics called it an exercise in “catastrophic success” language wielded without context and a blueprint that ignores not just the deep scars of history but the ongoing conditions of the Israeli occupation.
Last February, Trump sparked outrage around the world when he suggested that Gaza’s Palestinians could be permanently relocated to neighbouring countries, with the US taking over the territory to transform it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American writer, said the “indigenous traditions and social fabric of this land will be obliterated utterly” by the proposal.
“This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter, and “to turn what remains of her people into a cheap labour force to manage their ‘industrial zones’ and create an exclusive coastline for ‘tourism.’ Palestinians will be pushed behind walls and gates and retrained in ‘technical schools’ to serve Israel’s supremacist ideology.”
Gaza is one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban centres in the world. Archaeological and historical records show that Gaza City’s origins stretch back more than 5,000 years, serving as a key commercial hub on the ancient Via Maris trade route linking Africa and Asia.
Over millennia it was ruled by Egyptians, Philistines, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and Ottomans, each leaving layers of culture and heritage.
Today, much of modern Gaza lies in ruins. Decades of recurrent Israeli wars on the Strip, under strict Israeli air, sea, and land blockade since 2007, have razed entire neighbourhoods.
Since October 2023, the Israeli military has obliterated infrastructure, hospitals, schools, mosques, and homes, leaving Palestinians in desperate need of basic essentials like water, food and medicine. The vast majority of Palestinians now live in tents in weather conditions such that at least nine children and babies have died from hypothermia.
International agencies and independent researchers have struggled to count the human cost of the war, yet their figures paint a grim picture. According to a peer-reviewed analysis published in the US journal Nature, an independent survey suggests that almost 84,000 Palestinians died in Gaza between October 2023 and early January 2025.
United Nations reporting indicates that, as of late August 2025, 159,000 Palestinians have been injured, with tens of thousands more victims buried under rubble and counted only long after their deaths.
Humanitarian organisations warn that these figures understate the suffering. A UN humanitarian update noted that thousands of aid workers have been killed while trying to deliver life-saving assistance and that most of Gaza’s remaining population faces severe food insecurity.
In everyday terms, aid workers and local residents describe people living on water and scraps, families displaced repeatedly, and children dying not only from conflict injuries but from hunger and disease as basic services collapse.
Against this backdrop of devastation, the “New Gaza” presentation struck many as tone-deaf, unrealistic, and politically hollow.
In Davos, Kushner framed Gaza’s potential in terms of free-market opportunities, describing the enclave as possessing “amazing investment potential” and urging entrepreneurs to imagine a soaring, modern future.
But what the plan did not address was far more consequential: the Israeli occupation of Gaza’s borders, airspace and coastal waters, the continued daily enforcement of a blockade that restricts goods, fuel, food, and medicine, or the systematic displacement and insecurity that fuels ongoing suffering, all political realities absent from PowerPoint renderings.
Critics from around the world including human-rights advocates and Middle East analysts called the project a form of “Vegasification” of Gaza, offering gleaming facades while ignoring the deep structural issues that produced devastation in the first place.
In Arab and international media, commentators denounced the plan for its emphasis on economic redevelopment at the expense of political rights, sovereignty, and self-determination. One analysis highlighted that previous US proposals, such as Trump’s so-called “Deal of the Century,” similarly prioritised economic narratives over the core political questions that remain unresolved.
Observers have described the “New Gaza” vision in starkly critical terms: a blueprint construed as a cover for forced relocation, demographic manipulation, or long-term external control under the guise of reconstruction.
Some writers labelled it a “colonial-style development project,” one designed by outsiders without meaningful Palestinian participation, intent, or control. They argue that the plan masks the real issues of dispossession, displacement threats, and lack of Palestinian self-determination.
For Palestinians who remain displaced, rubble-clearing and luxury towers are less urgent than securing their right to return to their homes, ensuring freedom of movement, and restoring governance that they themselves choose and lead. None of these political imperatives were meaningfully engaged in Kushner’s presentation.
The plan left crucial questions unanswered. Who will fund the reconstruction? Kushner mentioned future donor conferences but offered no concrete commitments from nation-states or international institutions.
Where will displaced families live during rebuilding? The plans omitted the logistics for sheltering millions who are already homeless or living in squalid conditions. What about property rights and compensation? There was no clear mechanism for addressing what families have lost in the bombings or forced displacement.
How can a “free-market” model succeed amid the occupation? With borders controlled, imports restricted, and Gaza’s economy strangled, investors may balk at committing billions without fundamental changes to political conditions. This reality was conspicuously missing from the rosy projections.
The glittering renderings of a New Gaza – beachside towers, tech parks, sprawling waterfront boulevards – contrast sharply with the reality on the ground: an ancient city now struggling to survive amid shattered homes, starving families, and the jaw-dropping human cost of a war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Proponents may see potential; critics see detachment. Yet, the core of the critique is not merely aesthetic or political. It is moral. A reconstruction plan that ignores occupation, displacement, humanitarian crisis, and political rights risks replacing one form of ruin with another: not simply of buildings, but of justice, dignity and self-determination.
For Gaza to be more than a mirage on the Mediterranean, any vision for its future will have to confront the reasons it lies in ruins and end the Israeli occupation.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 29 January, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: