The latest plan to “rebuild” the Gaza Strip, packaged as Donald Trump’s 21-point peace framework, reveals the naked logic of modern imperialism: war and reconstruction are two sides of the same process of capitalist accumulation. Announced in September 2025, the plan combines a three-phase cease-fire with a sweeping redevelopment scheme projected at $100 billion in private investment and $20–30 billion in state-backed financing. Trump described it as “the biggest rebuilding project in world history,” while leaked prospectuses outlined returns of 300 to 400 percent over ten years for investors. The project would be managed through an international “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump himself, with participation from the U.S., Israel, Egypt, and select Gulf monarchies. Early financial outlines referenced 50 million tons of debris removal, construction of two deep-water ports, a special economic zone, three industrial parks, a coastal airport, and over 250,000 new housing units. Behind the diplomatic language lies a colossal commercial project: the transformation of Gaza from a devastated enclave into a profit-bearing territory for global finance capital. The language of “peace” and “stability” serves only to mask the fundamental reality: capital is preparing to profit from the destruction it helped create.

This is the essential pattern of imperial capitalism in its senile stage. War clears the ground, literally and financially, for new cycles of accumulation. Once the machinery of destruction has done its work, the same class that armed and financed it steps forward as “rebuilders,” issuing tenders, loans, and concessions to private monopolies. In Gaza’s case, those monopolies orbit the Trump–Kushner nexus. The leaked Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration, and Transformation (GREAT) Trust document listed nearly thirty corporations including Tesla, BlackRock, Bechtel, Siemens, and TSMC as “potential partners” in the new enclave, though many later disavowed involvement. The plan’s internal valuation treats Gaza’s coastline, estimated at 40 km of beachfront, as “prime redevelopment property” worth between $150 and $200 billion in long-term capital gains. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser, acts as the informal broker, coordinating with Israeli and Gulf investors through his firm Affinity Partners, which itself manages $3 billion in Saudi capital. Months before the cease-fire, he had already described Gaza’s waterfront as “very valuable real estate,” suggesting population “relocation” and “cleanup” to make redevelopment feasible. The merger of diplomacy, capital, and class interest is not coincidence but the normal operation of imperialism: state power opens new spaces for private enrichment, and private capital in turn sustains the geopolitical order that makes such enrichment possible. The displacement of millions becomes an opportunity for speculation; the ruins become collateral for new investment.

The cease-fire now being implemented, 20 hostages exchanged for roughly 1,950 Palestinian prisoners, partial IDF redeployments, and the daily entry of 400 to 600 humanitarian aid trucks, is only the first act. The second act, already in motion, is the auction of Gaza’s future. Consultancy models from Boston Consulting Group and other firms estimate initial infrastructure tenders of $15 to $20 billion for debris removal, port construction, and electrical-grid rebuilding, with foreign firms expected to capture 70 to 80 percent of contracts. Public-private development zones, designed to attract venture-capital and energy-sector investment, are projected to yield annual profits exceeding $8 to $10 billion by 2035. Reports mention blue-chip firms and construction conglomerates as “potential partners,” though most deny formal commitment. The truth is simpler: whether or not these names appear on contracts, the entire capitalist world-system benefits from the cycle. Reconstruction spending fuels global demand, generates new credit instruments, and sustains the rentier elites of the imperial core. Gaza’s rebuilding, like Iraq’s before it, is not a humanitarian necessity but a mechanism for restoring profit rates in a saturated global economy. Every dollar of aid becomes an investment, every act of charity a financial instrument. What is presented as “peace” is merely the continuation of war by other means, war for markets, war for profit, war for the survival of a decaying capitalist order.