WASHINGTON: The United States on Thursday announced plans for a “New Gaza” rebuilt from scratch to include residential towers, data centres and seaside resorts, part of President Donald Trump’s push to advance an Israel-Hamas ceasefire shaken by repeated violations.
The development came even as health official in the Gaza Strip said Israeli airstrikes had killed five people in the enclave today. There was no immediate Israeli comment on the violence, the latest to fray the October truce accord.
Trump has parlayed the ceasefire into a broader “Board of Peace” initiative aimed at resolving conflicts globally.
After hosting a signing ceremony for the board in Davos, Switzerland, Trump invited his son-in-law Jared Kushner to present development plans for Gaza, its densely populated cities and towns now in ruins from two years of war.
“In the beginning, we were toying with [building] a free zone, and then [having] a Hamas zone,” Kushner told an audience in Davos of Trump’s early plans to rebuild Gaza, where nearly the entire two million population is internally displaced.
“And then we said, you know what? Let’s just plan for catastrophic success.”
‘Master plan’
Kushner presented the audience with a slideshow depicting a “master plan” for what he termed a “New Gaza”, displayed on a colour-coded map with areas reserved for residential development, data centres and industrial parks.
The slides included an image of a Mediterranean coastline packed with glittering towers akin to those in Dubai or Singapore. They suggested redevelopment would begin in Rafah in the south, an area under complete Israeli military control.
But they did not address key issues such as property rights or compensation for Palestinians who lost their homes, businesses and livelihoods during the war. Nor did they address where displaced Palestinians might live during the rebuilding.
Kushner did not say who would fund the redevelopment, which would first require clearing an estimated 68m tonnes of rubble and war debris.
A conference will be held in Washington in the coming weeks “where we’ll announce a lot of the contributions that will be made … from the private sector”, Kushner said, without elaborating.
The slides shown by Kushner were nearly identical to slides leaked to the Wall Street Journal in December. The newspaper reported then that the US had offered to “anchor” 20% of the redevelopment project, without going into detail.
Trump has floated the idea of transforming long-impoverished and dilapidated Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, an idea that has drawn criticism from Palestinians.
Rafah crossing to open next week
Gaza’s border crossing with Egypt will reopen next week after largely being shut during the Israel-Hamas conflict, the Palestinian technocrat leader backed by Washington to administer the enclave announced today.
Ali Shaath made the announcement by video link during an event in Davos hosted by Trump.
A key unfulfilled element of the ceasefire, brokered by Trump in October, has been the reopening of Gaza’s main gateway to the world to allow the entry and exit of Palestinians.
“I am pleased to announce the Rafah crossing will open next week in both directions. For Palestinians in Gaza, Rafah is more than a gate. It is a lifeline and symbol of opportunity,” Shaath said.
“Opening Rafah signals that Gaza is no longer closed to the future and to the war,” Shaath said.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has controlled the Rafah crossing since 2024.
The ceasefire deal left Israel in control of more than half of Gaza, including the area that abuts the border crossing. Hamas controls the remainder of the enclave.
