Entire neighborhoods in Gaza lie in ruins. Hundreds of thousands are crammed into tents, struggling for food, water and power.
Despite this devastation, a leaked 38-page document from Donald Trump’s administration – the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation (Great) Trust – proposes to “fundamentally transform Gaza” folding it into the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (Imec).
While framed as a reconstruction plan, it outlines “massive US gains,” Imec’s acceleration, and consolidation of an “Abrahamic regional architecture” – a term that refers back to the 2020 Abraham Accords, US-brokered agreements that normalized relations between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain.
In many respects, the document echoes the “Gaza 2035” plan promoted by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This was the 2024 proposal that envisioned Gaza as a sanitised logistics hub linked to Saudi Arabia’s Neom mega-project and stripped of meaningful Palestinian presence.
As my co-authors and I trace in a recent book “Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine“, this continues a pattern of policies that deny Palestinians political agency and reduce Gaza to an investment opportunity.
Imec was launched at the 2023 G20 summit in New Delhi. Signed by the US, EU, India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, it was billed as a transformative infrastructure project. It comprised a chain of railways, ports, pipelines and digital cables linking South Asia to Europe via the Arabian Peninsula.
Israel was not formally a signatory, but its role was implicit. The corridor runs from Indian ports to the UAE, overland through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to the Haifa Port in Israel, then across the Mediterranean to Greece and Europe.
Like many such mega-projects, Imec is marketed in the language of efficiency – faster trade times, lower costs, new energy and data corridors. But its deeper significance is political.
For Washington, it serves as a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) while binding India into a US-led system. Europe views it as a hedge against the Suez Canal and Russian pipelines.
The Gulf monarchies see a chance to position themselves as the region’s main centre for trade and transport. Israel promotes Haifa as a gateway for Euro-Asian trade. India, meanwhile, gains quicker access to Europe while tightening its ties with both Washington and the Gulf.
Gaza as obstacle and gateway
The plan casts Gaza both as an Iranian outpost undermining Imec and as a historic crossroads of trade routes linking Egypt, Arabia, India and Europe.
By invoking Gaza’s history as a trading route, the plan presents the territory as a natural logistics gateway poised to “thrive once again” at the center of a “pro-American regional order.”
The blueprint proposes extending Gaza’s port from Egypt’s al-Arish, integrating its industries into regional supply chains, and reorganising its land into “planned cities” and digital economies.
What is being imagined is not recovery for its residents, but the conversion of Gaza into a logistics center serving Imec.
Perhaps the most radical element of the Great Trust is its model of direct trusteeship. The plan envisions a US-led custodianship, beginning with a bilateral US–Israel agreement and eventually expanding into a multilateral trust.
This body would govern Gaza, oversee security, manage aid and control redevelopment. After a “Palestinian polity” is established, the trust would still retain powers through a Compact of Free Association.
Even the most ill-fated US occupation plans in Iraq and Afghanistan did not so openly imagine territory as a corporatised trusteeship for global capital.
‘Voluntary’ relocation
Another striking feature of the plan is its provision for “voluntary relocation.” Palestinians who leave their homes in Gaza would receive relocation packages, rent subsidies and food stipends. The document assumes a quarter of the population will depart permanently, with financial models showing how the scheme becomes more profitable the more people leave.
In reality, the notion of voluntary departure under siege and famine is not voluntary at all. Israel’s blockade has produced what UN officials describe as engineered mass starvation. To frame out-migration as a choice is to sanction ethnic cleansing.
The plan also shows how the language of the Abraham Accords has been grafted onto Gaza’s imagined future. Nearly every element is dressed in “Abrahamic” branding: an Abraham gateway logistics hub in Rafah, an Abrahamic infrastructure corridor of railways, even new highways renamed after Saudi and Emirati leaders.
Techno-futurist gloss is added through smart manufacturing zones, AI-regulated data centres, luxury resorts and new digital-ID cities, planned “smart cities” where daily life, from housing and healthcare to commerce and employment, would be mediated through ID-based digital systems.
Saudi Arabia and the fig leaf of Palestinian statehood
A central ambition of the Great Trust is to channel Gulf capital into Gaza’s redevelopment under its trusteeship. The plan forecasts US$70–100 billion in public investment and another $35–65 billion from private investors, with public–private partnerships financing ports, rail, hospitals and data centers.
Saudi Arabia, though not formally part of the Abraham Accords, signaled its acceptance of the overall framework when it backed Imec. For Washington, Gaza’s reconstruction is imagined as the final step in persuading Riyadh to make normalization official – a prize that would anchor the “Abrahamic order.”
The Trump plan is designed to smooth this path, offering Saudi Arabia a custodial role in Gaza’s redevelopment and lucrative stakes in Imec. To make the deal more palatable, it even floats the idea of a Palestinian “polity” – a limited governance entity under trusteeship.
While such an arrangement may be billed as a step towards Palestinian statehood recognition by Saudi Arabia, this is precisely why any future gestures of recognition must be treated with caution. The real question is what, exactly, is being recognized, and in whose interest.
The Great Trust is, at its core, an investment prospectus. The document values Gaza today at “practically $0” – but projects it could be worth $324 billion within a decade.
Gaza is described less as a society than as a distressed asset to be flipped. This is disaster capitalism at its sharpest. It is devastation reframed as the precondition for speculative profit.
Yet visions of free-trade zones and futuristic cities quickly collide with reality. Palestinians have consistently rejected such schemes. What this leaked document makes clear, however, is that Gaza’s future is being framed within this broader US effort to reshape the region.
Rafeef Ziadah is senior lecturer in politics and public policy (emerging economies), King’s College London
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
All Trump cares about is cashing in on the Gaza holocaust. Palestinians? who were they?
Gazans have done their utmost to erase themselves from the community of civilized peoples and nations. No matter what the cowards at the UN signal, everyone wants an “Palestinian state” so long as it’s far, far away from them. Get this: there is no more “Gaza.” What will replace it should — hopefully — not be a malignant, infected blot on the globe, but something positive and productive. For that, there needs to be a new generation of non-barbarian, inbred and savage inhabitants, and that will take time — at least a generation. Meanwhile, they lie in the bed they made.
The whole world sees you Zionist savages for the sociopaths that you are. Killing women and children, over-shadowing one atrocity with an even bigger one is not something god’s “chosen” would be doing. You simply do not have any shame or remorse, reverse gear or the ability to stop yourselves – essentially, a lack of self control. Israel has made an enemy out of everybody, and they are unaware of the consequences of this to their dim future. If you are speaking about inbreeding, I suggest you take a look at Israel’s Jews, they seem to really enjoy the practice. You can tell by the outstanding results so far – 2000 years on, and still no closer to peace.
The 4by2’s have made a much more valuable contribution than the mo hamm edans.
Why do no Arab states want Paly refo’s?
Why don’t you move from your home to the streets of Los Angeles?
You’re right, Gaza will be emptied of Palestinians, but it doesn’t change the fact you’re a piece of trash.
The US and Israel are not in the business of building – they only excel at destroying and vandalizing. Any such attempt to compete with the BRI will fail because they are clueless with their idiotic ideology of dishing out humiliation and submission to everybody else, which they view as lessors.
The problem with this project is that Hamas still controls Gaza. And this is after two years of consistent Israeli attacks. Slaughtering civilians doesn’t win a war. The ugly “secret” that the Western MSM doesn’t want to talk about is how badly the IDF has performed since October 2023. Until Israel stops losing to Hamas, all of this is just idle talk.
Yes, really badly. Hamas has been decapitated, Hezbollah has been de-olloxed, Syria regime change, Houthis v quiet, Iran in deep trouble.
Yes the 4by2’s are doing really badly .
When the hammer is your only tool, every problem looks like a nail. Military force cannot solve all problems, this simple fact cannot be comprehended by you fools.
I have a long nail, so am grateful to have a big hammer.
Ultimately, LittleRooster, facts are facts.
Yes, Hamas has suffered heavy losses, but the organization is still largely intact. Most importantly, they still control nearly all of Gaza. When that changes then you can talk about this and other grand projects.
Remember, facts are facts. Israel has had some victories but has suffered some serious defeats as well. Overall, the IDF has had a rough time of things.
Facts are facts.
Hamas is not intact, it has been devastated. Just like Hez (no) bollox. They control the tunnels, like rats.
As most of the population support Hamas, there is only 1 solution. Displacement.
Actually, Hamas is intact and they still control nearly all of Gaza.
Facts, LittleRooster, facts.
Zionists are sociopaths. They revel in shameless barbarism, remorseless depravity. Just refer to the story of the Israeli sniper who sniped multiple family members who were trying to retrieve the bodies of their relatives. He said he did not understand why anybody would want to touch their bodies. Scale this up, you have Jews who go on murder safaris in Israel, killing Palestinians, then coming back to their Western countries and resuming a “normal” life again. That is Zionism for you – a scam where global Jewry can go on killing sprees against natives with impunity in a land they do not belong in.
Sign me up! Less valuable than elephants, lions etc.
In fact worthless.
Thank you for confirming you are a Zionist sociopath