Tony Blair thinktank worked with project developing ‘Trump Riviera' Gaza plan

The Guardian

9 hours ago

Tony Blair's thinktank worked with a project developing a postwar Gaza plan that included the creation of a 'Trump Riviera' and a manufacturing zone named after Elon Musk.
The project, led by Israeli business people and using financial models developed by the US consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG), was developed against the backdrop of Donald Trump's vision of taking over the Palestinian territory and transforming it into a resort.
While the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) said it was not involved in the authorship of the plan, two staff took part in calls as the project evolved.
The staff also took part in a message group used for the project, along with figures from BCG and the Israeli business people, while a TBI document titled 'Gaza Economic Blueprint' was shared within it, the Financial Times reported.
The report prompted an angry reaction from the institute, which Blair set up after he left Downing Street. It has more than 900 staff in more than 45 countries.
The former UK prime minister has been involved in the region and worked for nearly eight years as special representative of the Quartet of international powers seeking a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. He resigned in 2015.
The institute denied it was involved in the preparation of a slide deck, which the FT reported had been developed by the Israeli business people using BCG's financial models and was said to have proposed paying half a million Palestinians to leave the area.
The slides reportedly outlined a plan called the 'Great Trust' and was shared with the Trump administration. It envisaged that private investors would have been attracted to Gaza once many of the inhabitants had been paid to leave.
The plan outlined in the slides was reported to have been created to attract Trump's attention and that of wealthy Gulf rulers. Among 10 'mega projects', the document includes the 'MBS Ring' and 'MBZ Central' highways — named after the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and an 'Elon Musk smart manufacturing zone'
In February, Trump retweeted an AI-generated video and said: 'We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal … the Riviera of the Middle East, it could be so magnificent.'
Blair's institute said it was not involved in the preparation of the slide deck, which it described as 'a BCG deck', and added that it had no input into its contents.
'Tony Blair himself has neither spoken to the people who prepared this deck nor commented on it. The TBI team speaks to many different groups and organisations with postwar 'plans' for Gaza, but had nothing to do with the authorship of this plan,' a spokesperson said.
'TBI staff participated in two calls, as they have done with many other people with 'Gaza plans' and interacting with them doesn't mean endorsement. But we were not involved in drawing up the deck, it is emphatically not TBI work or 'joint' work so it would be completely wrong to suggest it is.
'Of course we're opposed to any plan which tries to make Gazans leave Gaza. We want them to be able to stay and live in Gaza.'
'The TBI document referred to is an internal TBI document looking at proposals being made by various parties covering all the different aspects of what a postwar Gaza could look like, though it is one of many such internal documents.'
The spokesperson said that TBI's work in the region has always been dedicated to building a better Gaza for Gazans, adding: 'Tony Blair has worked for this since leaving office. It has never been about relocating Gazans, which is a proposal TBI has never authored, developed or endorsed.'
The TBI, which describes itself as a 'not-for-profit, non-partisan organisation helping governments and leaders turn bold ideas into reality'.
BCG has been embroiled in a separate controversy over its connection to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the controversial Israeli- and US-backed delivery group.
The consulting company said last month that it had cancelled its contract with the GHF amid growing media scrutiny into the group's work and sources of funding.
BCG has sought to disassociate itself from the work in Gaza and has reportedly fired two partners who it said had mislead senior management. TheFT reported last week that the BCG team had been involved in modelling of the potential reconstruction of Gaza.