By Dan Steinbock             

When the bombing of Gaza will finally cease, the U.S. administration will push the post-genocide opportunity for property development. In this quest, Tony Blair is the public face; Jared Kushner, the commissioner; and the Trump White House, the architect.

The jackals are back! In early September, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and the scion of another Big Apple real estate tycoon, began working with U.S. administration, eager to plan for post-genocide Gaza.

After two years of destruction of Gaza and genocide of Palestinians, it was time for economic development – or at least property development.           

“Converting military victories to political victories”  

Kushner had served as Trump’s go-between in the Abraham Accords that seeks to “normalize” the relations among Israel and Arab states. Mediated by the United States, the Accords are a set of deals between Israel, Gulf States (UAE, Bahrain) and Arab states (Morocco, Sudan). But to Netanyahu, these accords were the first step in ejecting Palestine from the Middle East talks.

The goal has been to bring Saudi Arabia under the umbrella. Yet, Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza and violent pogroms in the West Bank have effectively undermined the plan. Riyadh has little incentive to inflame regional destabilization, which would penalize Saudi Vision 2030, the huge modernization and diversification program.

Talking in a recent “No Priors” podcast, hosted by his AI biz pals Elad Gil and Sarah Guo, Kushner stated that “Hamas in Gaza is basically destroyed. They have an opportunity to convert those military victories into political victories. If you’re able to find a satisfactory resolution… you can get to a place where full normalization with Saudi and Israel.”

But Kushner is neither the first nor the last in this macabre effort to cash on the decimation of Gaza and the genocide of the Gazans.

Israeli quest of Gaza’s forcible cleansing      

Barely a week after October 7, Israel’s intelligence ministry, which oversees policies related to the intelligence organizations Mossad and Shin Bet, prepared a secret memorandum on Gaza. Headed by Gila Gamliel, a veteran of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, the ministry sought to persuade the U.S. and other countries to support Israel’s goals.

The memo recommended the forcible transfer of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to Egypt’s Sinai as the preferred course of action. It encouraged Israel’s government to lead a public campaign in the West to promote the expulsion of Gaza’s population as a “humanitarian necessity.” The challenge was to enlist Washington to exert pressure on Egypt, along with other countries in Europe and the Middle East, to absorb the Gazans.

Unsurprisingly, the memo sparked a global firestorm over ethnic cleansing. Yet, Gamliel’s ministry was advised by an Israeli thinktank to cash on the operation. The Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy saw ethnic cleansing as a commercial opportunity and presented the plan as well-aligned “with the economic and geopolitical interests of the State of Israel, Egypt, the USA and Saudi Arabia.”

In reality, all of these countries oppose vocally such plans. So, Netanyahu’s cabinet developed Plan B. 

The Gaza 2035 Plan          

In February 2024, outraged by Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority developed a joint political vision for rehabilitating the Gaza Strip and establishing a Palestinian state after the Israel-Hamas war.

To preempt such schemes, PM Netanyahu’s office presented its own vision of “Gaza 2035.” It highlighted the Strip’s role in the historical Baghdad-Egypt trade routes and Yemen-Europe trade routes. It proposed to reintegrate Gaza into the regional economy – under Israeli terms.

During the first year of the humanitarian aid phase, Israel would create safe areas free of Hamas control. Gazans would run humanitarian aid, but under the supervision of a coalition of Arab states. An Arab coalition would create a multilateral Gaza Rehabilitation Authority (GRA), to oversee the reconstruction and the Strip’s finances. The GRA would not include members of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority (PA), which would be “reformed.”

The key to the plan was huge infrastructure investment, which Israel delegated to the Arab countries.

But Israel’s carrots did little to instigate Arab interest or U.S. blessings.

Hard-sell of the century  

During a press conference with PM Netanyahu in February 2024, President Trump said the United States “will take over” the Gaza Strip. Gaza, Trump suggested, could become a “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Crafted largely by Kushner and unveiled in 2020, the Trump plan envisioned Israel annexing all of its settlements in the West Bank while granting the Palestinians a pathway to a semi-contiguous state on the remaining territory. The aim was to eject Palestinians from any serious discussion on their future.

Dreaming of the Nobel peace prize, Trump envisioned a “deal of the century” that would bring a lasting peace to Israel/Palestine. It was a hard-sell of the century. In turn, Kushner had a direct economic stake in the outcome of the Gaza War.

After his time at the White House, Trump’s son-in-law set up a $3 billion private equity fund to invest in Israeli companies, including $2 billion raised from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Kushner’s Affinity Partners private equity fund had chosen two Israeli companies to invest in. By early 2025, he was building a Middle East business empire from Israel to the Gulf states. 

And so, Kushner was back into dealmaking advising Trump and his special envoy Steven Witkoff to once again sidestep Palestinian leadership. And even though the Netanyahu cabinet chose to bomb Qatar, blessed Israel’s ongoing annexation of the West Bank and began a lethal ground invasion of the already-destroyed Gaza City, Kushner still – against all cold realities – sees Saudi-Israeli normalization as the light at the end of the tunnel.

Touted by US neoconservatives and far-right, Kushner’s West Wing memoir was as truthful as its marketing: “a fast-paced and surprisingly candid account of… an earnest businessman with no political ambitions”

Smotrich: After demolition, real estate bonanza in Gaza  

When Trump stated in February that the US would take over Gaza, Bezalel Smotrich read every line with a smile. The political leader of Israel’s Messianic far-right was executing a biblical “decisive plan” of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, which he was incorporating into Israel.

In July, Smotrich claimed his vision had President Trump’s backing. Speaking at a Knesset conference called “The Gaza Riviera – from vision to reality,” he joined other participants with plans for rebuilding Jewish presence in Gaza. The Strip, he said, would become an “inseparable part of the State of Israel.”

In an August interview, Smotrich announced he was working to reestablish the former Israeli settlements of Ganim and Kadim in the northern West Bank, both of which were evacuated during Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

Speaking at a real estate conference in Tel Aviv last week, Smotrich said Gaza was a potential real estate “bonanza” and that he was in talks with the United States on how to divide up the coastal enclave after the war. “The demolition, the first stage in the city’s renewal, we have already done. Now we need to build,” he said adding: “There is a business plan, put together by the most professional people here, that is on President Trump’s desk.”

Officially, the White House treated Smotrich like a rotten fish, with a tactful distance. In practice, the Trump administration cultivated similar plans, strongly promoted by its key financiers.

But Kushner knew that Trump needed a more credible figure. Hence, the return of Tony Blair.

U.S. ideas, Kushner’s commission, Blair’s face      

In the past two decades, Tony Blair, the former British PM, and his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change have shrewdly portrayed cashing on international conflicts as efforts of “driving real change.”

Not long after October 7, 2023, Blair began efforts to craft a plan for the “day after.” Yet, Israel’s bombing of and genocide in Gaza lasted far longer than anticipated. Moreover, Blair’s plan needed Trump’s support.

Yet, Blair plan is effectively Kushner’s design: Trump’s son-in-law commissioned the ex-British PM. Kushner needed an internationally acceptable face to sell the schemes he had originally introduced. In this task, he had Trump’s blessing. Mugged by realities, the White House understands it needs the support of all key actors for its blueprint in Gaza.

For a while, Blair has been rallying international stakeholders to form at transitional authority to govern the Strip before it gets handed over to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Blair’s proposal envisions the establishment of the Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA) along with a series of subordinate structures, preferably by a UN Security Council resolution.

GITA is reminiscent of Netanyahu’s Gaza Rehabilitation Authority in the Gaza 2035 Plan.

With his signature broad smile, Blair has portrayed his plan as something that is not premised on forcible population displacement. All other schemes – including that by Netanyahu’s right-hand Ron Dermer, the highly controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the Boston Consulting Group – have collapsed. And Smotrich’s transfer ploys will never gain international support.

Yet, the ultimate objective of the Trump administration is to get “Johnny” on board (Trump’s moniker to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman). In view of this White House, the Palestinians can only have a marginal role. That’s why Blair’s proposal downgrades Palestinian participation, even that of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in the name of “reforms.”

But as always, Blair has a knack of expressing negative objectives in seemingly positive, optimistic rhetoric. This discrepancy between U.S. ultimate goals and its diplomatic rhetoric was again highlighted during the weekend.

What the White House wants, really

In August, Charles Kushner, the U.S. ambassador to France and the father of Jared Kushner, wrote in a Wall Street Journal letter to French President Macron that public “gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France.”

As several U.S. allies – the UK, Canada and Australia – now recognize the state of Palestine, Macron called Kushner’s criticism of France “unacceptable” for diplomat. Preparing for the French recognition declaration, Macron stated that “recognizing the Palestinian state today is the only way to provide a political solution to a situation which has to stop.”

What’s at play here is two decades of gross diplomatic failure of the West regarding Gaza.

In the 2006 democratic election, the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza gave a clear majority to Hamas, as opposed to the Palestinian Authority. Following Hamas’s takeover of Gaza from Fatah, Israel and the U.S. imposed a ground, air, and maritime blockade, and announced only humanitarian supplies would be allowed into the Strip. That’s when Israel first blockaded Gaza in a deliberate attempt to push the area’s economy “to the brink of collapse,” according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks.

It was these ruthless decisions that set the stage to Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza in 2023, several waves of weaponized famines in the Strip and to the complicity of the U.S. and the EU in the massacres.

Blair’s plan seeks to sustain this status quo in the post-genocide Gaza. Setting the rhetoric aside, it is commissioned by Jared Kushner to serve his ends. And those ends are the objectives of the Trump administration. It is the big picture – the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Gulf/Arab states – that the White House is after.

The problem is that, after two years of mass butchery in Gaza, such Accords are no longer viable.

The original commentary was released by Informed Comment (US) on Sept 21, 2025.

About the Author

The author of The Fall of Israel (2025) and The Obliteration Doctrine (2025), Dr Dan Steinbock is the founder of Difference Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net/

By Dan Steinbock

Bezalel Smotrich is one of political leaders of Israel’s Messianic far-right. But he is also a shrewd administrator executing a biblical “decisive plan” of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, which he is incorporating into Israel.

Notorious both in Israel and abroad, yet beloved as a visionary by his constituencies, Bezalel Smotrich is the far-right leader of Israel’s National Religious Party-Religious Zionism and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current Minister of Finance.

Ridiculed and underestimated abroad, Smotrich has consistently exploited the Gaza hostilities, in order to bring about the annexation of the West Bank to the pre-1967 Israel.

A self-proclaimed racist and fascist, Smotrich has promoted the blockade of the Gaza Strip since October 2023. He calls for a “voluntary emigration” of the Palestinians from Gaza to other countries. His ultimate objective is to transform Israel from a secular democratic state to a religious autocracy ruled by the Jewish biblical law.

Restoring the Torah justice system

Smotrich has lived his life in Jewish settlements, which are illegal by international law. The descendant of a Ukrainian-Jewish family that lost most of its members in the Holocaust, he grew up in an Orthodox-Jewish and Zionist milieu. But it was distinctively Messianic.

Studying in Mercaz HaRav Kook, Yashlatz, and Yeshivat Kedumim, Smotrich was educated by the apocalyptic ideals of rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the father of Messianic religious Zionism. His political career took off in the mid-2010s, when the political clout of the Messianic far-right Jewish groups began to be felt nationwide. In 2019 he campaigned for the Ministry of Justice, saying that he sought the portfolio to “restore the Torah justice system.”

It is an old religious-Zionist goal, touted in the past by the violent Jewish-American rabbi Meir Kahane. It is premised on the idea that democratic institutions are a Hellenic, goy thing, whereas only the Five Books of Moses can serve as a foundation of law in a Jewish state. Smotrich’s extremist politics aim at replacing the secular rule of law with traditional Jewish law.

In 2021, Smotrich, emboldened by his growing popularity, declared that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, should have “finished the job” and kicked all Palestinians out when Israel was founded. In his view, members of Israel’s Arab minority communities are citizens, but only “for now.”

Violence to undermine Israeli withdrawal from Gaza

In spring 2023, when Smotrich took over a large chunk of the administration of the West Bank, he did not condemn settler violence. Instead, he urged Israel to react “in a way that conveys that the landlord has gone crazy” and called for “striking the cities of terror and its instigators without mercy, with tanks and helicopters.” That became his rallying cry after October 7, 2023.

Gaza is personal to Smotrich. In the early 2000s, he saw Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip as blasphemy. During the protests against the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, he was arrested in 2005 while in possession of 700 liters of gasoline.

According to Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security, the arrest was motivated by suspicion that he was participating in an attempt to blow up Ayalon Highway, a major arterial road. He was held in jail for three weeks but not charged after he refused speak.

Like all religious fanatics, Smotrich has walked his talk. He has a plan and he is determined to realize it. It isn’t a new plan. It is more than half a decade old.

Once scorned as religious humbug, it is now becoming still another new fact on the ground.

Smotrich’s “Decisive Plan” for Gaza

In 2017, Smotrich, then still a young Knesset member, presented his “Decisive Plan” in closed religious Zionist circles. It represented an endgame of sorts for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The plan portrayed the conflict as devoid of any reconciliation. It rejected partition. It shunned any idea of a Palestinian state, any idea of Palestinian presence. Smotrich envisioned a singular state from the sea to the river, for one nation only: the Jewish people. True to his beliefs, he built on biblical allegories, which to him were no allegories at all:

When Joshua entered the land, he sent three letters to its inhabitants: Those who want to accept [our rule] will accept; those who want to leave, will leave; those who want to fight, will fight….

When they have no hope and no outlook, they will leave, just as they left in 1948.

Since October 7, Smotrich has championed what he describes as a “humane” solution for Gazan non-combatants: a “voluntary” population transfer.

The two-state model was a dead end. Smotrich’s solution was simpler: Eliminate the adversary, resolve the dilemma.

“Leave!”

A month after October 7, 2023, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented his outline of what America would not accept as the “day after” in Gaza:

No forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. No use of Gaza as a platform for launching terrorism or other attacks against Israel. No diminution of the territory in Gaza and a commitment to Palestinian land governance for Gaza and the West Bank and in a unified way.

In light of the on-the-ground realities, Blinken was living in a parallel universe. Most Gazans had already been displaced, the attacks continued, the infrastructure had been leveled and the path was paved for mass starvation.

To the Messianic far-right in Israel, the White House is a convenient asset in God’s plan for Israel; not more, not less. In their view, America is not just rich and powerful, but soft and manipulable.

So, while the Netanyahu cabinet’s official emissaries paid tribute to their American sponsors by regularly bowing to liturgical phrases, such as a “two-state solution” and “no displacement,” they were tenaciously building the institutional framework for a singular Jewish state and for displacing more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.

In Smotrich’s view, Arabs owned no land. Jews were the landlords. Palestinians were just short-term tenants. Jews stayed; Palestinians were visiting. In a while, the world will forget all about the West Bank and Gaza, even the terms themselves. Those lands will be Judaized and know by their Hebrew terms as Judea and Samaria, and Azza.

So, when Netanyahu entrusted Smotrich with the administration of the occupied West Bank, he did it deliberately and purposely. It was a signal to Palestinian Arabs: Leave!

The original commentary was released by Informed Comment (US) on Sept. 18, 2025.

About the Author

The author of The Fall of Israel (2024) and The Obliteration Doctrine (2025), Dr Dan Steinbock, a strategist of the multipolar world, is the founder of Difference Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net/