Donald Trump is once again putting forward a vision for Gaza that strips Palestinians of their homes and rights under the guise of redevelopment. A 38 page proposal known as the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust (GREAT Trust) outlines a decade long U.S. trusteeship over Gaza, marketed as a plan to turn the enclave into a tourism and manufacturing hub. In reality it is a blueprint for ethnic cleansing dressed up with slick branding, sick intentions and empty promises.
The plan proposes the infamous U.S. backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to oversee reconstruction, security, and so called Humanitarian Transit Areas that would serve as concentration camps for residents while their land is repurposed.
Investors from Gulf states and Western consultancies are expected to bankroll the scheme. The glossy renderings of AI powered smart cities, luxury resorts, and industrial corridors are designed to dazzle. But beneath the marketing lies a clear intention to remove Palestinians from Gaza and redevelop their homeland for outsiders.
At the heart of the plan is the coerced relocation of Gaza’s population. Palestinians would be offered what Trump’s allies cynically call incentives: 5,000 dollars in cash, four years of rent subsidies, one year of food support, and digital tokens for housing that may never materialize. To describe this as voluntary is an insult.
After nearly a year of bombardment, starvation, and disease, Palestinians are being forced into a corner where survival depends on compliance. This is not choice, it is coercion.
International law is clear. The Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute prohibit the forced transfer of civilian populations. Amnesty International has condemned the idea as appalling and unlawful. The United Nations has warned repeatedly that ethnic cleansing cannot be legitimized by financial sweeteners or legal tricks. Trump’s plan, like Israel’s ongoing war, treats Palestinians as disposable obstacles to be removed, not a people with inalienable rights.
Trump first floated this idea publicly in February 2025, boasting that the U.S. could take over Gaza, relocate its people, and remake the strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” International outrage forced him to soften his words, but the core objective has never shifted. What is presented now as the GREAT Trust is nothing new. It is the same colonial fantasy: remove the native population, seize the land, and sell it to investors.
This vision aligns perfectly with Israel’s decades long policy of displacement. From the ongoing Nakba that started in 1948 and continues with today’s relentless assault on Gaza, the through line is clear. Trump is not innovating a plan, he is amplifying Israel’s ongoing project of erasure with U.S. backing.
Legal experts warn that implementing this plan could make U.S. officials complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court. Regional leaders including Egypt and Jordan have rejected any attempt to resettle Palestinians outside their homeland. Palestinian organizations have denounced the scheme as a second Nakba in the making, a catastrophic repeat of history with international complicity.
Even within the U.S. foreign policy establishment, voices warn of the dangers. To imagine that Palestinians can be paid to leave their land and that Gaza can be rebuilt as a playground for investors is not just unlawful, it is delusional. It ignores the resilience of a people who have endured dispossession for generations and who continue to demand the right to return.
World’s Leading Scholars Say Gaza Meets the Legal Definition of Genocide
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), a body of nearly 500 specialists from around the world, has adopted a resolution stating that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide under Article II of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.
The timing of Trump’s plan is striking. Just as the International Association of Genocide Scholars has declared that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide, Trump is proposing a roadmap that cements that crime. This is not reconstruction. It is the laundering of ethnic cleansing through investment brochures and consultancy jargon.
Trump’s plan extends the violence into the future, turning Gaza into a laboratory for displacement, occupation, and profiteering. History will not record this as a bold vision for peace. It will be remembered as an attempt to whitewash genocide with the language of progress.