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tony blair
Why the Architects of Erasure Will Not Succeed in Gaza
Palestine has been subjected to waves of imperial conquest and colonial rule for thousands of years—and yet we, the Indigenous people of this land, remain.
Jan 21, 2026
The men in Western capitals who are making decisions about Gaza have no real understanding of its people. They do not know their history, their lineage, their culture, or their deep roots in the land. And now, added to them, are the rich and insulated men who have never associated with ordinary people even in their own countries—men who have never known hunger, fear, displacement, or the sound of bombs in the night.
These are the men who presume to determine the fate of a people who have lost their homes, their family members, and their limbs. They dine together on champagne and caviar, slap each other on the back for their “strategizing,” and congratulate themselves on their cleverness—while entire families are being erased and a wounded people are reduced to numbers in briefing papers.
Yet this is exactly what is happening. Men in Armani suits, taking their directives from a president who does not even know the geography of the region—much less its history—are now presiding over a grotesque tribunal whose real concern is not justice or peace, but real estate, luxury projects, and the protection of the occupiers. It is a scene reminiscent of the Dark Ages of Europe, when humanity was set aside so that a handful of rulers could live in comfort and isolation, untouched by the suffering they decreed for others.
They shuttle back and forth in carefully staged visits, with the media serving as their marketing arm, recording their words as if they were gospel truth, while the victims of this genocide continue to languish in tents, under rubble, and in extreme heat and cold. To make themselves look important—and to pretend they are learners and peacemakers—they “consult” with the occupiers, bribe or threaten the dependent regimes surrounding Palestine in the name of their so-called noble mission, and then announce to the world their “progress” in bringing peace to the region.
What these men do not understand is that even while bombs rain down on us from the sky, we focus not only on surviving, but on succeeding.
Even before they began this so-called mission, these wealthy men were already complicit in the destruction of Gaza. They are on record describing Gazans as barbaric killers who must be “reined in” because a small number of armed resisters refused to submit quietly to life under brutal Israeli occupation. Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump and a close ally of Benjamin Netanyahu, has spoken openly about further ethnic cleansing. He was quoted as saying, “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
When Steve Witkoff was asked whether a genocide was taking place in Gaza, he replied, “Absolutely not… No, no… there was a war being fought.” This, despite the fact that many major human rights organizations and genocide scholars—including Jewish and Holocaust experts—have described what is happening in Gaza as genocide.
As for Tony Blair, he has never seen a Western war he did not like. He was among the first to support the invasion of Iraq, took part in the Kosovo war, and remains an ardent supporter of Israel and its occupation. These men—and their wealthy Arab collaborators—see no problem in deciding the fate of the Palestinians without a single Palestinian at the table.
Their aim is clear: to keep Israel armed and protected as it continues what it has been doing since 1948—ethnically cleansing, colonizing, and reshaping Palestine in their so-called enlightened Western image and their so-called democracy.
They see Gaza only through maps, military briefings, and political calculations—not through the lives of human beings who carry memory, dignity, and an unbroken history in their very bones. You cannot govern, partition, or destroy a people you have never taken the time to know.
Yet as a Palestinian, I am not shocked or surprised by these delusions. I am not even discouraged by the scale of destruction or the theater of cruelty disguised as diplomacy. After all, our history is riddled with empires and conquerors. Palestine has been subjected to waves of imperial conquest and colonial rule for thousands of years—and yet we, the Indigenous people of this land, remain.
What these men do not understand is that even while bombs rain down on us from the sky, we focus not only on surviving, but on succeeding. While every university in Gaza has been destroyed, surviving professors have continued teaching and training new doctors to replace the many medical workers who were killed. What they will never understand is that children whose limbs were severed by bombs are forming soccer teams and playing the game they love on crutches.
What these so-called peacemakers will never understand is this: The men, women, and children whose fate they are trying to decide come from a lineage that has outlived every empire, outlasted every conqueror, and will still be here long after these architects of destruction have been forgotten.
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'War Criminals Are Proposing a War Criminal': Tony Blair Floated to Lead Gaza Transition
"The suggestion that Tony Blair—a key architect of the disastrous Iraq occupation and an apologist for Israel's war crimes—should take control of Gaza is insane and obscene."
Sep 26, 2025
Amid reporting this week that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair could head a postwar transitional authority in the Gaza Strip, with support from US President Donald Trump, critics of the proposal are blasting the ex-Labour Party leader as a war criminal.
"It's the war criminal in chief now planning to assist in ethnic cleansing and persecution. After his successes in Afghanistan and Iraq," Lindsey German, convenor of the UK's Stop the War Coalition, said on social media Friday, sharing a BBC article about the development.
While serving as prime minister from 1997 to 2007, Blair played a key part in the US-led War on Terror, sending British troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. Though the 72-year-old has never faced formal charges for war crimes, critics from the UK to the Middle East and beyond have long argued that he should "be sitting in The Hague on trial" for his role in the illegal invasion.
As The Guardian noted Thursday: "After stepping down as prime minister in 2007, he took on the role of Middle East envoy until 2015, and he enjoys a high standing with many Gulf leaders. But Blair is bitterly resented by many Palestinians—who see him as having impeded their efforts to attain statehood—and more broadly across the region for his role in backing the 2003 US invasion of Iraq."
"The Palestinian people have the same right as all people to determine their own future, free from foreign interference or occupation."
Blair began working on a postwar proposal just months after Israel began bombing Gaza in October 2023 and met with Trump at the White House in August. In response to The Guardian's report that the president "is backing" a plan for Blair to lead the proposed Gaza International Transitional Authority, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said: "War criminals are proposing a war criminal as head of.... Gaza. It would be precious comedy if it were not so tragic."
Scottish historian William Dalrymple—co-host of the podcast Empire, whose recent episodes have focused on Gaza—quipped, "Given Blair's superb record in the Middle East, what could possibly go wrong?"'
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest US Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, said in a statement: "The suggestion that Tony Blair—a key architect of the disastrous Iraq occupation and an apologist for Israel's war crimes—should take control of Gaza is insane and obscene. The Trump administration should reject this neo-colonial proposal, which insults the people of the region and threatens to spark more conflict."
" Palestinians do not need a British war criminal to govern them. They need freedom, justice, and an end to the decades of brutal occupation and apartheid. Any attempt to impose outside Western leadership on Gaza after the genocide would almost certainly lead to more disaster," he added. "The Palestinian people have the same right as all people to determine their own future, free from foreign interference or occupation."
Chandni Desai, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto working on a book titled Revolutionary Circuits of Liberation: The Radical Tradition of Palestinian Resistance Culture and Internationalism, pointed to the UK's control of Palestine in the 20th century.
"The UK 'recognizes' the state of Palestine—but is the British Mandate back?" Desai said. "Tony Blair, who helped kill a million Iraqis, is now the US' pick to 'manage' Gaza. The empire never left. Gaza doesn't need a colonial viceroy, its people want liberation and self-determination."
Abdullah Omar, a 24-year-old Palestinian who has been documenting his experience "trying to survive the genocide" on social media, similarly wrote: "Tony Blair, who killed a million Iraqis. He is the one America wants to appoint to manage the Gaza Strip."
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Trump Admin Circulating Plan to Transform Depopulated Gaza Into High-Tech Cash Cow
Under the proposal, the US would take control after "voluntary" relocation of Palestinians from the strip, where proposed projects include an Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone and Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands.
Sep 01, 2025
The White House is "circulating" a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into US President Donald Trump's vision of a high-tech "Riviera of the Middle East" brimming with private investment and replete with artificial intelligence-powered "smart cities."
That's according a 38-page prospectus for a proposed Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration, and Transformation (GREAT) Trust obtained by The Washington Post and published in a report on Sunday. Parts of the proposal were previously reported by the Financial Times.
"Gaza can transform into a Mediterranean hub for manufacturing, trade, data, and tourism, benefiting from its strategic location, access to markets... resources, and a young workforce all supported by Israeli tech and [Gulf Cooperation Council] investments," the prospectus states.
However, to journalist Hala Jaber, the plan amounts to "genocide packaged as real estate."
Here comes the Gaza Network State.A plan to turn Gaza into a privately-developed “gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub” with “AI-powered smart cities” and “Trump Riviera” resortgift link:wapo.st/4g2eATo
[image or embed]
— Gil Durán (@gilduran.com) August 31, 2025 at 10:18 AM
The GREAT Trust was drafted by some of the same Israelis behind the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose aid distribution points in Gaza have been the sites of deliberate massacres and other incidents in which thousands of aid-seeking Palestinians have been killed or wounded.
According to the Post, financial modeling for the GREAT Trust proposal "was done by a team working at the time for the Boston Consulting Group"—which played a key role in creating GHF. BCG told the Post that the firm did not approve work on the trust plan, and that two senior partners who led the financial modeling were subsequently terminated.
The GREAT Trust envisions "a US-led multirlateral custodianship" lasting a decade or longer and leading to "a reformed Palestinian self-governance after Gaza is "demilitarized and de-radicalized."
Josh Paul—a former US State Department official who resigned in October 2023 over the Biden administration's decision to sell more arms to Israel as it waged a war on Gaza increasingly viewed by experts as genocidal—told Democracy Now! last week that Trump's plan for Gaza is "essentially a new form of colonialism, a transition from Israeli colonialism to corporate" colonialism.
The GREAT Trust contains two proposals for Gaza's more than 2 million Palestinians. Under one plan, approximately 75% of Gaza's population would remain in the strip during its transformation. The second proposal involves up to 500,000 Gazans relocating to third countries, 75% of them permanently.
The prospectus does not say how many Palestinians would leave Gaza under the relocation option. Those who choose to permanently relocate to other unspecified countries would each receive $5,000 plus four years of subsidized rent and subsidized food for a year.
The GREAT Trust allocates $6 billion for temporary housing for Palestinians who remain in Gaza and $5 billion for those who relocate.
The proposal projects huge profits for investors—nearly four times the return on investment and annual revenue of $4.5 billion within a decade. The project would be a boon for companies ranging from builders including Saudi bin Laden Group, infrastructure specialists like IKEA, the mercenary firm Academi (formerly Blackwater), US military contractor CACI—which last year was found liable for torturing Iraqis at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison—electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, tech firms such as Amazon, and hoteliers Mandarin Oriental and IHG Hotels and Resorts.
Central to the plan are 10 "megaprojects," including half a dozen "smart cities," a regional logistics hub to be build over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah, a central highway named after Saudi Crown Prime Mohammed bin Salman—Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states feature prominently in the proposal as investors—large-scale solar and desalinization plants, a US data safe haven, an "Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone," and "Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands" similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai.
In addition to "massive" financial gains for private US investors, the GREAT Trust lists strategic benefits for the United States that would enable it to "strengthen" its "hold in the east Mediterranean and secure US industry access to $1.3 trillion of rare-earth minerals from the Gulf."
Earlier this year, Trump said the US would "take over" Gaza, American real estate developers would "level it out" and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" atop its ruins after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave Palestine's coastal exclave. The president called for the "voluntary" transfer of Gazans to Egypt and Jordan, both of whose leaders vehemently rejected the plan.
"Voluntary emigration" is widely considered a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given Palestinians' general unwillingness to leave their homeland.
According to a May survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, nearly half of Gazans expressed a willingness to apply for Israeli assistance to relocate to other countries. However, many Gazans say they would never leave the strip, where most inhabitants are descendants of survivors of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948. Some are actual Nakba survivors.
"I'm staying in a partially destroyed house in Khan Younis now," one Gazan man told the Post. "But we could renovate. I refuse to be made to go to another country, Muslim or not. This is my homeland."
The Post report follows a meeting last Wednesday at the White House, where Trump, senior administration officials, and invited guests including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, investor and real estate developer Jared Kushner—who is also the president's son-in-law—and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer discussed Gaza's future.
While Dermer reportedly claimed that Israel does not seek to permanently occupy Gaza, Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation in Gaza—have said they will conquer the entire strip and keep at least large parts of it.
"We conquer, cleanse, and stay until Hamas is destroyed," Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said. "On the way, we annihilate everything that still remains."
The Israel Knesset also recently hosted a conference called "The Gaza Riviera–from vision to reality" where participants openly discussed the occupation and ethnic cleansing of the strip.
The publication of the GREAT Trust comes as Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City amid a growing engineered famine that has killed at least hundreds of Palestinians and is starving hundreds of thousands of more. Israel's 696-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 233,200 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures are seen as a likely undercount by experts.
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