The Bigger Picture of US-Israeli Colonial Plans 

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It is questionable whether these plans for Gaza will ever see the light, or whether they are at all intended to become real. They do have, however, even on paper a real impact. This is why it is crucial to understand, denounce and fight them. 

They combine colonial economic and political interests into a horrific dystopia to add to the devastating effects of Israel’s genocide perpetuated through its military power.

“At the core of disaster capitalism”, as defined by Naomi Klein in “The Shock Doctrine”, “is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. By capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, Klein argues that the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.” 

Israel’s genocide in Gaza is a moment where disaster capitalism potentially can come to a level never seen before: privatizing the state itself in the form of the “Board of Peace”, privatizing crucial UN humanitarian functions, through GHF. The very fact that such concepts are being legitimized is unacceptable.

The GREAT Plan

The Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation (GREAT) Trust is Trump’s Plan to turn the Gaza Strip into the The Riviera of the Middle East, through the transformation of Gaza into a dystopian US-led colonial protectorate, at the service of a new level of disaster capitalism and wider US-Israeli interests in the Middle East.The weaponization of both aid and reconstruction as a tool for ethnic cleansing and genocide is an integral part of this plan.

Key components include 10 large projects under public-private partnerships (PPPs) to build infrastructure for disaster capitalism to flourish. The two major roads proposed in the plan, the “MBS Ring Road” and the “MBZ Central Highway”, are respectively named for Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed. Other projects include “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone” along the Gaza-Israel border, US-regulated data centers, a small port and airport, and luxury resorts with artificial islands. 

The plan amounts to ethnic cleansing and forced displacement. It entails the “voluntary” and “temporary” relocation of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza during reconstruction, with incentives like $5,000 per person cash bonuses, rent and food subsidies for those who leave the Gaza Strip. The plan assumes that 25% of Palestinians in Gaza will leave the country, and 75% of them choose not to return to Gaza. 

It builds on the “Gaza 2035” plan promoted by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and outlines a US-Israeli vision for Gaza: It ignores Palestinian right to self-determination, as for that matter any other rights of the Palestinian people, and aims to legitimize Israel’s illegal occupation and allow for the perpetuation of the genocide. It calls for the establishment of a US-led colonial governing body to oversee the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as well as the transformation of Gaza into a central logistics hub for the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). 

The idea of setting up a “GREAT Trust” and “Multilateral Custodianship” sounds like a new edition of the British East India Company that ruled the Indian subcontinent for almost 300 years, mixed with the traits of King Leopold II’s personal and atrocious rule over Congo. 

GHF supposedly stopped operations in the Strip after the ceasefire was reached in Gaza early October and the distribution of humanitarian aid is claimed to be once again being led by the UN. It has only officially shut down on November 24. 

IMEC –  The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is an initiative launched in September 2023 during the G20 Summit in New Delhi, which in turn builds on the Abraham’s Accords. It markets itself as a “multinational infrastructure project that aims to revolutionize global trade and connectivity”, and a “geopolitical game-changer”. It spans India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and Europe, creating a multi-modal network of railways, ports, and highways. Rafeef Ziadah points out that “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.” The fact that it is intended to be a counter-initiative to the far more advanced Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative is written between the lines. 

The prospects of the IMEC initiative, linked with the GREAT Plan, which markets this all as “reconstruction”, give Arab states a fig leave to continue normalization with Israel, its genocide and apartheid regime. In the meanwhile, except for Palestinians, everyone will get a piece of the cake. 

The 20-point Plan

The 20-point plan is a US-Israeli plan, announced by US president Donald Trump on September 29 in a press conference at the White House alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The plan was drawn up in consultation with many Arab and Muslim countries, though following strong popular pressure some states had to try to distance themselves – a tiny bit – from it later. The ceasefire, which took effect on October 10, was introduced within the framework of the 20-point plan. It is just another tool to advance Israeli colonial domination. 

It essentially reworded the vision of the GREAT Plan in 20 points. 

It is framed around two phases: first, an exchange of prisoners alongside Israeli forces’ withdrawal to an agreed-upon line (the “yellow line”); second, the demilitarization of Gaza at a later stage. However, these declared objectives expose the plan’s underlying aim of consolidating the Israeli regime’s colonial control over the Strip and beyond. The supposed first phase functions as a political move to secure leverage and justify continued military presence. On December 8 2025, Israel’s top military commander Eyal Zamir announced the “position”yellow line” constitutes “a new border line” with Gaza.

Meanwhile, the “demilitarization” extends the control by internationalising and privatizing  the “management” of Gaza, stripping Palestinians of their agency and violating their right to self-determination.

It includes the establishment of a  “Board of Peace,” which “will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair.” It further adapts the idea prepared during the July 2025  high-level conference led by France and Saudi Arabia of an “international stabilisation mission” in Gaza. This concept appears now as the deployment of the so-called International Stabilisation Forces (ISF), which only stabilizes Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide. 

The ISF is touted to be the “the long-term internal security solution” and, conditional to standards, milestones, and timeframes agreed upon by Israel, should take over the task of repressing Palestinians from the Israeli military (IDF). The mere fact that the military force to occupy Gaza would not be called anymore IDF but ISF, and be a privatized force, doesn’t make the occupation less illegal and the genocide less criminal. 

UN Security Council Resolution 2803

On November 17, 2025, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2803 endorsing the US-Israeli twenty-point plan for Gaza, which will be remembered as a day of disgrace to the UN and the world. Former senior UN human rights official Craig Mokhiber called it a “day of shame for the United Nations, and for governments around the world on their knees before the US empire and its violent Israeli client”. 

The US sponsored genocidal resolution aims to legitimize their dystopian plans for Gaza and to break Israel’s isolation by normalizing ties with Arab and Muslim-majority states. It engineers an international shield for Israel’s ongoing genocide, apartheid, and occupation. By adopting structures like a “Board of Peace (BoP)” and an “International Stabilization Force (ISF)” it effectively establishes a colonial protectorate to secure Israel’s control and keep much of Gaza uninhabitable.

UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian rights, Francesca Albanese denounced that it “will leave Palestine in the hands of a puppet administration, assigning the United States, which shares complicity in the genocide, as the new manager of the open-air prison that Israel has already established.”

CMCC and the Gaza Humanitarian Belt (GHB): GHF’s Role Continues

The US, while claiming that they want to replace GHF, proposed the Gaza Humanitarian Belt, a network of 12 to 16 aid hubs each serving as a multipurpose center. Beyond “humanitarian” efforts, the proposal also includes “voluntary reconciliation facilities” for the disarmament of Hamas and forward operating bases for the ISF. Oversight of this system falls under the newly established Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) operated by US Central Command (CENTCOM). In this system, UN agencies and NGOs would all be required to route all humanitarian aid through the CMCC, which will tracked them by drone surveillance. This system will force UN agencies and INGOs to stop operating in Gaza or renounce the mandatory principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence.

200 US troops are already present on the ground in Kiyat Gam, Tel Aviv, in the CMCC headquarters. The CMCC’s three-story structure includes a first floor designated for Israeli security personnel only (a secure area for officials from the IDF, Foreign Ministry, Mossad and Shin Bet). While the third floor is for US personnel only, the second floor is a joint working hub where Israelis, Americans and representatives from other collaborating states and parties are coordinating. The partners include Germany, Spain, Denmark, Britain, Canada, Italy and France, alongside international bodies such as the United Nations and various humanitarian aid organizations. The US has announced that the CMCC is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire agreement. 

The Gaza Humanitarian Belt (GHB) is nothing but another face of GHF, a US-Israeli military scheme to use humanitarian aid to perpetuate genocide and occupation. Even though the GHB plan claims that GHF would be absorbed or replaced by other humanitarian actors, including the UAE, Moroccan Red Cross societies, and the Samaritan’s Purse, a US-based evangelical Christian organization, it is actually just being replicated at a more institutionalised manner through the CMCC.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) confirmed that UN agencies and major aid organizations participated in the coordination meetings convened by the CMCC. While they denounced and were forced by public outcry to keep distance from the GHF, they are now endorsing and cooperating with its new iteration – the GHB. 

Other Ethnic Cleansing Plans 

The above, hegemonic plans are not the only ones that have been proposed in order to enable Israel to achieve its goal of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

According to “three sources familiar with the effort”, Israel and the United States were interested in resettling Palestinians from Gaza to either Syria, Sudan, Morocco, or the separatist Somali regions of Puntland and Somaliland. Somalia and Sudan rejected the proposal, while Puntland and Somaliland expressed willingness to enter discussions on the matter in exchange for diplomatic recognition. 

In May 2025, reports emerged that the Trump administration was working on a plan to permanently relocate 1 million Palestinians from Gaza to Libya, while offering the release of around $30 billion in funds frozen by the US since the toppling of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in exchange for Libyan authorities agreeing to the deal.

In July 2025, Netanyahu met with Trump and reiterated support for the plan of relocating Palestinians, saying it was “free choice” if Palestinians wanted to stay or leave. The US and Israel were working to identify countries for this plan.

We need to fight the US-Israeli attempts to institutionalize genocide and ethnic cleansing through GHF, the GREAT Plan, in all its forms and iterations. Symbolic gestures like recognizing a non-existent Palestinian state or talking about reconstruction while the destruction of our people continues won’t help. The real solution lies in dismantling Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism through concrete, enforceable measures. For states, sanctions remain not only an obligation but also the most effective, least controllable tool against Israeli aggression. Now is the time to escalate BDS and focus on global pressure.