by Barry Shepard, published on Socialist Action, September 196, 2025
In late August President Trump met with his son-in-law Jared Kushner and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss plans for a postwar Gaza.
A month before, staff members of a think tank set up by Blair met with Israeli business leaders in developing a postwar Gaza plan that included the creation of a “Trump Riviera” and a manufacturing zone named after Elon Musk, using financial models developed by a U.S. firm, the Boston Consulting Group.
Kushner has praised Gaza’s potential as a “very valuable waterfront property” some of which he would like to own with his father in law. Back in February, Trump called for setting up a luxury beach resort called “Trump Gaza” after Israel crushes Palestinians there.
Blair was a leader of “New Labour”, and is an anti-socialist right winger and forerunner of the present Labour Party Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who led a witch-hunt to root out of the party anyone who voiced any pro-Palestinian positions, whom he charged with “anti-Semitism”.
In a program discussing this, Democracy Now! interviewed John Paul, a former State Department official, who resigned over U.S. policy toward Gaza.
Paul said, “At the end of the day, this is a nightmarish example of profits over people. What you have with Kushner and Blair is a combination of the corrupt and the feckless….”
The Gaza Riviera project “is reliant ultimately, on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. And that’s the reason the Boston Consulting Group, which had played a part in developing it, not only withdrew from the project, but fired some of the consultants who had been involved, precisely because there is not way to advance this project without violating international law.”
This proposal for a postwar Gaza coincides with — and is part of — Israel’s current intensification of the war against Gaza City to pave the way for the mass slaughter and/or driving out of Palestinians from all of Gaza. To do this, Netanyahu is mobilizing 60,000 army reserves to join the fight in Gaza City.
Trump has repeatedly said that in all the land that Israel occupies, including the West Bank, Gaza and “Green Line Israel”, Palestinians should be gotten rid of, a position Netanyahu says he agrees with.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has said that “Palestinians don’t exist”, a position he hasn’t backed away from.
Trump recently denied any Palestinian from entering the United States, including anyone from the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Israeli military occupied West Bank, the right to enter the U.S. to participate in the United Nation’s General Assembly. Previously, Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas has been at the General Assembly. But Netanyahu has now ruled out any role for the PA in Greater Israel, in spite of Abbas’ pro-Israel and pro-U.S. positions including his cooperation with the Israeli military in the West Bank.
There is no light between Trump and Netanyahu; they are in lockstep.
Israel’s new assault on Gaza City is meant to drive out Palestinians and force them and all other Palestinians into the southern area around Rafah, to put pressure on Egypt to take them in, which Egypt has opposed. John Paul says that Israel’s aim is to force Palestinians into “small manageable groups … and then impose forms of governance that are undemocratic, that are autocratic, and that allow for companies to come in and take profits and gain strategic advantage.”
The U.S. is participating directly through its “aid” organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which aims to drive out UN and any other real aid groups to bring food into Gaza, but is also designed to bring in some food to entrap Palestinians who come for food but are then mowed down by Israeli troops. John Paul said that “over a thousand Palestinians have been killed” at these sites.
While these aims of Netanyahu and Trump are clear, achieving them is another matter. Palestinians are fighting back, through Hamas or other subsequent groups if it comes to that. In such situations of war against a whole people, the adage is, “for every fighter killed two take their place.” Two examples were the Algerian fighters against the French, and in Vietnam first against the French and then the Americans.
Palestinians in Gaza will fight Israel to the bitter end, if it comes to that.
Our job in the “West” is to continue to fight for the Palestinians against Israel and its U.S. backers, through mass mobilizations and other means, right now with the demand to stop arming Israel!
[Editor’s note: Indeed, the demands to Stop Arming Israel! and End All Aid to Israel, applies to all nations on earth including the BRICS nations [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and others], with perhaps one exception, revolutionary Cuba, that rejects all aid to the racist apartheid, Zionist, colonial settler Israel.]
*Featured Image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump meet at the White House on February 4, 2025. (False Modesty) Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters