Tony Blair Institute Linked to Trump’s Gaza ‘Riviera’ Proposal – Report
The plan, outlined in a slide deck and seen by the Financial Times, reportedly proposed paying half a million Palestinians to leave the enclave.
The Tony Blair Institute has been involved in a project to develop a widely criticized plan by the US President that proposed ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza and turning the enclave into a “Trump Riviera” with an “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone,” The Financial Times revealed on Sunday.
Tony Blair’s staff took part in ‘Gaza Riviera’ project with BCG https://t.co/z0KLwjOis0
— Financial Times (@FT) July 6, 2025
Israeli businessmen led the plan, titled the “Great Trust”, which used “financial models” developed inside the US-based Boston Consulting Group (BCG) “to reimagine Gaza as a thriving trading hub,” the report said. “Great” is short for “Gaza Reconstruction, Economic Acceleration and Transformation,” it noted.
The plan, outlined in a slide deck and seen by the Financial Times, reportedly proposed paying half a million Palestinians to leave the enclave and “attracting private investors to develop Gaza.”
Message Group
Although the former UK prime minister’s institute has not authored or endorsed the final slide deck, the report said, two of its staff members participated in a 12-person message group used for the project.
Although a TBI spokesperson initially denied the institute’s involvement in the preparation of the deck, the paper revealed that the group included two TBI staff, BCG consultants, and Israeli businessmen.
JUST IN:
“Gaza Riviera” is a colonial real estate scheme aimed at forcibly displacing Palestinians and transforming Gaza into a privatized economic zone.
Over the past 21 months, plans, some linked to Donald Trump, have proposed evacuating Gaza’s residents and redeveloping… pic.twitter.com/XgW6fGGue7
— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws) July 7, 2025
A document written by a TBI staff member titled “Gaza Economic Blueprint” was circulated in the group for consideration. It included the idea of a “Gaza Riviera” with artificial islands off the coast, “blockchain-based trade initiatives, a deep water port to tie Gaza into the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor, and low-tax ‘special economic zones’.”
Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza had “created a once-in-a-century opportunity to rebuild Gaza from first principles . . . as a secure, modern prosperous society,” the TBI document stated. The TBI’s document did not refer to the relocation of Palestinians, the report said.
The TBI spokesperson later said, “We have never said TBI knew nothing about what this group was working on or that they weren’t on calls in which the group discussed their plans.”
‘Listening Mode’
The spokesperson then claimed that the institute was “essentially in listening mode” and that the “internal TBI document” considered proposals “being made by various parties … [and] is one of many such internal documents”.
‘Tony Blair’s staff took part in ‘Gaza Riviera’ project with BCG’ Appalling. Even for a war profiteer who’s made 10s of millions from the invasion of Iraq & arms companies, designing a riviera on top of the slaughter fields of Gaza is a new low https://t.co/jEDPC9PVuP
— Andrew Feinstein (@andrewfeinstein) July 6, 2025
The Tony Blair Institute for Gobal Change was formed in 2016 by the former British prime minister, and involves “a global team of political strategists, policy experts” and others “united in our desire to make the world a better place,” according to its website.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
According to the Financial Times, the BCG had been involved in setting up the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the US-backed Israeli aid mechanism in Gaza, which has resulted in the killings of over 700 Palestinians at or near aid distribution sites.
The BCG team, which had also modelled the reconstruction of Gaza, the report said, “disavowed” much of the work and claimed it was done largely without approval.
The Financial Times report mentioned tech investor Liran Tancman and venture capitalist Michael Eisenberg as being part of the group of Israeli businessmen behind the project.
It said Phil Reilly, an ally of the businessmen “who now runs security operations for GHF, courted Tony Blair at a meeting in London in March.”
Reilly is a former CIA officer and BCG adviser, TBI said, and had requested the meeting. “Again, Mr Blair listened. But as you know, TBI is not part of GHF.”
The paper said that a spokesperson for Reilly’s Safe Reach Solutions “said Blair’s office had requested the meeting to learn about the work his company did manning a checkpoint during a brief ceasefire in the war earlier this year.”
‘The Great Trust’
The final slide deck is titled “The Great Trust: From a Demolished Iranian Proxy to a Prosperous Abrahamic Ally” and has been shared with members of the current and former US administrations, the report noted, citing sources familiar with the project.
The deck was produced in April, before Israel and the US attacked Iran.
Trump’s Vision for Gaza: A ‘Riviera’ Built on Ethnic Cleansing
“It envisaged all Gaza’s public land being put into a trust for development, whose assets could be sold to investors via digital tokens traded on a blockchain,” the report added. It said Palestinians in Gaza “would be offered the chance to contribute their privately owned land to the trust in return for a token that gave them the right to a permanent housing unit,”
Ten “Mega Projects” are mentioned, including the “the “MBS Ring” and “MBZ Central” highways, named after the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Salman and Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, respectively.
An “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone” would be set up on the Gaza-Israel border where US electric vehicle companies would build cars for export to Europe, the report said.
The slide deck “describes how the new highways, port and airport would turn Gaza into a trading hub,” it added, and would “secure US industry access to $1.3tn of rare-earth minerals in the Gulf” from western Saudi Arabia.
Relocation Cost and Returns
It also included the logos of companies which “the authors aspired to attract to Gaza,” such as Tesla, Amazon Web Services and Ikea.
According to the plan, the relocation of Palestinians would cost $5bn, the report said, but it would generate “$23k savings on every Palestinian relocating”.
Fueling Ethnic Cleansing: Will US Complicity in Gaza Genocide ever End?
Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump proposed the forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza in order to “take over” the enclave and turn into what he called “the Riviera of the Middle East.” His announcement was widely condemned and rejected by Arab leaders.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
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