After denying involvement in Trump’s ‘Gaza riviera’ plan, Tony Blair is set to run it

When the Tony Blair Institute was first accused of involvement in Donald Trump’s deranged and criminal ‘Gaza Riviera’ plan to drive out or kill Gaza’s Palestinian population and turn the Strip into a ‘riviera’-style beach resort, it tried to deny it – telling the Financial Times (FT) when approached for comment on a ‘slide deck’ outlining the plan that:

Your story is categorically wrong… TBI was not involved in the preparation of the deck, which was a BCG deck, and had no input whatever into its contents.

However, the FT subsequently confirmed that, while not ‘author[ing] or endors[ing] the final slide deck’, Tony Blair Institute staff were involved in the plan:

The Tony Blair Institute participated in a project to develop a postwar [sic] Gaza plan that envisaged kick-starting the enclave’s economy with a “Trump Riviera” and an “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone”.

The plan outlined in a slide deck, seen by the Financial Times, was led by Israeli businessmen and used financial models developed inside Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to reimagine Gaza as a thriving trading hub.

Titled the “Great Trust” and shared with the Trump administration, it proposed paying half a million Palestinians to leave the area and attracting private investors to develop Gaza.

While the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) did not author or endorse the final slide deck, two staff members at the former UK prime minister’s institute participated in message groups and calls as the project developed, according to people familiar with the work.

One lengthy document on postwar Gaza, written by a TBI staff member, was shared within the group for consideration. This included the idea of a “Gaza Riviera” with artificial islands off the coast akin to those in Dubai, 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”.

The Tony Blair Institute document also described Israel’s destruction of Gaza as:

creat[ing] a once-in-a-century opportunity to rebuild Gaza from first principles… whose assets could be sold to investors via digital tokens traded on a blockchain.

Trump does want Tony Blair to run Gaza

Despite its initial attempts to distance itself from the plan, the institute and Blair personally are now reported to be in line, not just to help implement the plan but to run the whole of Gaza. According to press reports (emphases added):

The White House is backing a plan that would see Tony Blair head a temporary administration of the Gaza Strip – initially without the direct involvement of the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to Israeli media reports.

Under the proposal, Blair would lead a body called the Gaza International Transitional Authority (Gita) that would have a mandate to be Gaza’s “supreme political and legal authority” for as long as five years.

His and his institute’s plan for Gaza led non-profit news site currentaffairs.org to describe Blair as:

The monster we always knew he was.

The Tony Blair Institute has claimed that its planning has:

always been dedicated to building a better Gaza for Palestinians.

The foundation and its founder should be nowhere near Gaza. They should, however, be very, very close to the Hague.

Featured image via the Canary