Rebuilding Gaza was a concept discussed since the first months of the genocide, even as Israel gave no hint of stopping. In April 2025, the UN was already vague about the funds for rebuilding Gaza, although the concept fit right into the humanitarian paradigm. The worst case scenario envisioned by the UN was that it would take until 2092 for Gaza “to go back to its economic level of 2022.” The 2022 date is well beyond Operation Protective Edge in 2014, when rebuilding Gaza after Israel’s aggression was also the UN’s rhetorical saving grace, until it wasn’t anymore as the so-called mechanisms turned into surveillance methods aiding Israel’s colonial violence.
This time, however, US President Donald Trump was ahead of the international community, shaping the concept of rebuilding Gaza into real estate investment. In February 2025, Jared Kushner suggested Israel “move the people out and then clean it up” to pave the way for beachfront property. Genocide serving real estate investment, or rebuilding Gaza, depending on the level of hypocrisy. The bottom line is Palestinians being forcibly displaced from Gaza, which is a war crime under international law, and one that the UN normalised since the 1948 Nakba.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Kushner presented his so-called masterplan for Gaza, with around 180 skyscrapers, plans for coastal tourism that encroach upon almost the entire coastline, and development plans for residential areas. There was no consultation with Palestinians, no mention of rebuilding Gaza according to its Indigenous Palestinian character. No mention of the “New Gaza” erasing all of Gaza’s history. Kushner’s real-estate plan erases genocide, and to implement the plan, Palestinians would have to be erased from Gaza too.
“There is no Plan B,” AlJazeera reported Kushner stating.
Does the phrase ring a bell? The statement is synonymous with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres emphatically refusing alternatives to the defunct two-state paradigm. There is no Plan B, Guterres would often state, while clinging to a hypothetical diplomatic concession that for years had been declared obsolete due to Israel’s colonial expansion. What was left out of this equation, however, was that the UN never truly treated the forced displacement of Palestinians as a war crime. Therefore, Israel’s colonial expansion and forced displacement of Palestinians merely became cause and effect to be incorporated into a failing humanitarian paradigm, now also on the brink of extinction.
How does “There is no Plan B” echo now that the UN Security Council endorsed the US Plan for Gaza, handing over power to the pinnacle of imperialism? If there truly was no Plan B, why would there be an endorsement of a Plan B? Why did the UN, and UN member states, declare opposition to forced transfer of Palestinians from Gaza during the genocide, but not oppose the US proposal of real estate investment in Gaza that clearly does not cater for the Palestinians living in the enclave? Endorsing Trump’s plan for Gaza means that the UN continues to endorse the forced transfer of Palestinians when it serves colonial and imperialist agendas. The UN accepted the 1948 Nakba, which paved the way for the establishment of Israel’s colonial enterprise on Palestinian land. It accepted decades of forced transfer and relied on the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to keep the Palestinian right of return relevant in rhetoric while colonial complicity stripped it of meaning and implementation.
“We are strongly committed to do whatever we can to ensure the full implementation of Security Council Resolution 2803,” Alessandra Vellucci, the Director of the UN Information Service in Genca, stated. “There is a role for the UN there about the UN leading on humanitarian aid delivery, which we have been doing for such a long time.
Between the US quest for dominance and the UN striving for relevance, the only common factor is the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Gaza is not barren land; it is home to a population that represents the entirety of Palestine because of forced displacement. The feasibility of Kushner’s real-estate proposal is debatable, but although issues such as demilitarisation are mentioned as conditions for reconstruction to take place, what remains missing is the Palestinian input. The UN and the Board of Peace are already acting as if Palestinians in Gaza are non-existent. So, when it becomes important to note that Palestinians are in Gaza, and are determined to remain on their own land, what solution will the international community, be it either institution, seek for the Indigenous population?
If the UN wants to assert its stance, it will not oppose forced displacement as it is through Palestinian refugees that the humanitarian paradigm can remain relevant in UN politics. If the US implements its real-estate plans for Gaza, Kushner has already articulated his preference: “move the people out.” War crimes are profitable for human rights organisations and real estate developers. However, the UN has much to answer for, as it has enabled each step towards Israel’s genocide as well as the current phase. Rebuilding Gaza is no longer a question of malfunctioning mechanisms; it is clearly a tool of ethnic cleansing and not without precedent either. The 1948 Nakba is one clear example. Will the UN uphold the humanitarian paradigm at the expense of the Palestinian people? Stating there is no Plan B allows colonial violence to create one.
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