Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (R) and Jared Kushner (L), U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior White House adviser and son-in-law attend U.S.-led workshop in Manama, Bahrain on June 26, 2019. [BNA – Pool – Anadolu Agency]
While the Gaza Strip is being destroyed, its people displaced, killed, and starved in the course of an ongoing genocide that has claimed the lives of more than 66,000 martyrs and left tens of thousands wounded, the hyenas race to seize the spoils of devastated Gaza after the war, cloaking their schemes in dazzling humanitarian slogans. In reality, these are colonial projects that revive the dark eras of mandate and trusteeship.
Rather than implement the clear will of the international community, expressed in United Nations resolutions calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian relief, these actors spent two years of ongoing carnage drafting a plan for population transfer – a plan that rewards Israel for its unprecedented crimes by granting it what it could not achieve through sheer force of arms.
The scheme now being circulated is a reworking of an older displacement project in which the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) played a role. Donald Trump echoed its contours during his notorious 4 February 2025 press conference with Netanyahu, when he spoke of buying Gaza and turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” – a tourist destination emptied of its people. The plan, prepared with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and codenamed “Aurora,” envisioned the removal of some half a million Palestinians – a quarter of Gaza’s population – by luring them to leave “voluntarily” in exchange for resettlement packages worth $9,000 per person.
On 27 August 2025, Trump hosted his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the architect of the “Deal of the Century,” along with Tony Blair at the White House to discuss Gaza’s post-war future. Four days later, on 31 August, The Washington Post published a leaked document entitled “The Great Trust” which laid out elements of the “Aurora” plan, including the transformation of Gaza into a tourist enclave once much of its population had been forced out.
The leaked paper went further than financial incentives. It put a price tag on violations of international law and sketched proposals for artificial islands dotted with luxury resorts, special economic zones, technology hubs and infrastructure projects, many bearing the fingerprints of Gulf states that have either normalised or are preparing to normalise with Israel. Among them were a ring road named after Mohammed bin Salman, a central highway named for Mohammed bin Zayed, and an industrial park carrying the name of Elon Musk.
Trump’s announcement of his intention to acquire Gaza and empty it of its inhabitants provoked an immediate storm. East and West alike condemned the idea as a brazen violation of the very principles the international community pledged after two world wars – above all the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms the right of every person to live securely on their land, free to determine their destiny.
Faced with mounting rejection, the plan’s architects appear to have reshaped it in more palatable language – much like the Balfour Declaration a century earlier, which promised a Jewish homeland “without prejudice” to others’ rights, while the Mandate machinery worked systematically to dispossess the Palestinians and entrench their catastrophe.
In its updated guise, the plan calls for an international administration led by Tony Blair to govern Gaza, alongside a body ostensibly charged with safeguarding property rights. Residents leaving the Strip would, in theory, retain the right to return after reconstruction – though no guarantees are offered in practice, given Israel’s control of the crossings. The occupation forces would meanwhile remain in areas already seized, withdrawing only gradually with no deadlines, while maintaining full security and military control throughout the Strip.
Several Arab regimes were aware of the project, and some endorsed it. Evidence points in particular to the UAE’s central role. When Trump first floated his proposal to acquire Gaza and displace its people, the Emirati ambassador to Washington, Yousef Al-Otaiba, confidently declared that he had yet to see an alternative to Trump’s plan – a statement delivered at the World Government Summit in Dubai on 12 February 2025.
READ: Hamas: Blair not welcome in Palestine, our people can manage their own affairs
Blair’s close ties to Abu Dhabi underline this involvement. For years he served as an adviser to Mohammed bin Zayed, and their relationship endured well beyond his official duties. One of the directors of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – the Armenian David Papazian, whose foundation was created by the Boston Group to advance the original displacement plan – resides in the UAE and enjoys strong links with its rulers. Recently he became the subject of an international arrest warrant tied to a corruption scandal involving a deal with Masdar, the Emirati renewable energy company, during his tenure as head of Armenia’s National Investment Fund.
Nor is it any secret that Mohammed bin Zayed has been eager to secure Israel’s victory. Amid massacres and mass starvation, his policies did not falter. On the contrary, normalisation grew stronger. He worked actively to block any serious Arab or Islamic effort to halt the genocide from the first joint summit in Riyadh in November 2023 onwards. He even rushed to prop up Israel’s collapsing economy by establishing a land route stretching from the UAE through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to transport goods to Israel after the Houthis shut down its shipping lanes in the Red Sea.
The plan circulating today is styled after the Marshall Plan devised by Western allies after the Second World War, reflects Netanyahu’s ambition to subjugate Gaza completely. Beyond displacement and land seizure, it seeks to re-engineer Palestinian consciousness to fit the messianic ideology of the occupier – an ideology in which Palestinians are cast as unwanted guests and Israelis as the rightful masters, unchallenged no matter what crimes they commit.
Blair has thus revived the spirit of Britain’s colonial past, following the path of High Commissioners like Herbert Samuel, Herbert Plumer, Harry Luke, John Chancellor, Arthur Wauchope and Harold MacMichael, who all presided over policies that turned Palestine into a platform for Jewish settlement while stripping Palestinians of their political rights.
Blair’s schemes cannot be trusted, regardless of how much he dresses them up. During his time as Quartet envoy (2007–2015), he was widely criticised for blatant pro-Israel bias and indifference to Palestinian suffering. His initiatives were confined to narrow economic and security files, while genuine political pressure on Israel to end the occupation or respect international law was conspicuously absent.
It must also be remembered that Blair is himself a war criminal with a long record of deceit. In 2003 he forged documents and fabricated evidence claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, thereby justifying the invasion in alliance with Washington. That decision destroyed Iraq, killed and displaced hundreds of thousands, and ignited sectarian strife whose flames burn to this day.
Blair belongs, in thought and deed, to a political order that has for 77 years been complicit in the dispossession of the Palestinian people. This order has never wavered in its support for Israel, enabling its expansion and every manner of atrocity – including today’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The guardianship schemes now being circulated for Gaza are a gross crime, a betrayal of the principles of justice, peace and equality enshrined in the UN Charter. After two years of genocide, it is unconscionable to deny Palestinians the chance to recover on their own terms with Arab and Islamic support, in line with international humanitarian law which affirms their rights as equal to all other peoples. It is illogical – indeed grotesque – to imagine the United Nations endorsing a plan that flies in the face of its own principles and resolutions, which affirm the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights and their right to self-determination.
OPINION: Enough of hypocrisy: It’s time to stop the genocide
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.