Trump’s Corporate Takeover of Gaza Denies Palestinian Self-Determination
IMEU Policy Project Memo #28
BACKGROUND
On February 19, President Trump’s corporate-style board will meet in Washington, DC to plan phase two of his takeover plan for Gaza. Following the World Economic Forum in Davos, this next phase of Trump’s Gaza plan became clearer, entailing his dictatorial control over Gaza’s legislative, executive, economic, and military future through his so-called “Board of Peace”.
Trump’s corporate-style board, which is staffed by his political allies and whose permanent members are composed primarily of human rights-abusing and authoritarian countries, is designed to line the pockets of Trump and his political allies rather than benefit the Palestinian survivors of Israel’s genocide in Gaza who will be locked inside ghettos under perpetual Israeli military occupation and denied self-determination under this plan.
Rather than confining his corporate-style takeover to Gaza, Trump now envisions his board replacing many of the functions of the UN, permitting Trump to undermine international law to further his dangerous unilateralist foreign policy agenda of attempting to take over additional countries such as Venezuela and Greenland.
TOPLINES
Trump and his board will exercise total control over Palestinians. According to a draft board resolution revealed by Drop Site News, Trump will exercise total control over Gaza via his role as chair of his corporate-style board. The resolution will give the entity “full legislative, executive, and judicial control over Gaza”. Trump will also control Gaza’s economic future and its military situation through his oversight of the so-called “International Stabilization Force” (ISF).
New details about the Trump takeover expose it as a cash grab. Trump aims to use this unchecked power to enrich himself and his allies and donors. The plan calls for the creation of coastal towers, data centers, logistics hubs, and more to benefit foreign investors–while shutting Palestinians out from meaningful political and economic participation. These projects won’t serve the wellbeing of Palestinians; they will only serve to enrich Trump and his donors and allies–a toxic mix of neocolonialism and profiteering from disaster capitalism.
Trump's plan won't hold Israel accountable for its violations in phase one. Like all other versions of Trump’s plan for the takeover of Gaza, this latest version still has no mechanism to hold Israel accountable for its violations during the first phase of the agreement. Israel has killed nearly 600 Palestinians in Gaza since the first phase went into effect, is obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid, and is severely restricting the movement of Palestinians through the Rafah border crossing. This lack of accountability for Israel’s violations of phase one only encourages more violations, which could result in Israel’s ultimate aim to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza.
Trump’s board is an attempt to personally establish his own international order. Trump has repeatedly suggested that the board could replace the UN. While the initial phase of Trump’s board uses Palestinians in Gaza as the involuntary subjects of his self-serving experiment, both he and his administration have promised to export this approach to other conflict zones, such as Sudan. Taken together with Trump’s expansionist agenda, which has been evident from Venezuela to Greenland, the board could enable him to impose his will in other areas of the world.
Trump’s board is stacked with human rights abusers and his far-right allies. Israel, which is committing an ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and whose prime minister is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his alleged complicity in crimes against humanity, accepted an invitation to Trump’s board. The board’s membership–whose permanent members must pay a $1 billion fee–also includes: Belarus, which is a participant in Russia’s war in Ukraine; the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, which have been accused of human rights violations; and Hungary, Argentina, and El Salvador, whose presidents are part of the global far-right with which Trump and his administration are aligned.
DETAILS
STRUCTURE
Trump’s corporate-style board has evolved rapidly in recent weeks. On January 16, the White House announced the creation of two new governance bodies–an Executive Board and a Gaza Executive Board–under the umbrella of the overall board. Several members and advisers of the two boards also feature prominently in the Trump administration’s plans to take over Gaza and hold concerning connections to pro-Israel advocacy groups in the US and to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The Executive Board will set Gaza’s policies while the Gaza Executive Board–helmed by Nickolay Mladenov, Trump’s representative in Gaza–is tasked with overseeing the unelected and unaccountable technocratic Palestinian body which will run day-to-day operations there.
Some members of the Executive Board include:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who justified Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza.
President Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has questioned Palestinians’ ability to exercise self-determination and expressed interest in profiting from the property values of Gaza’s coastline without regard for the Palestinians who live there.
Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, whose sketchy business dealings were recently the subject of a Congressional Dear Colleague letter.
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who supported President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq and whose think tank helped develop Trump’s plan for the corporate takeover of Gaza.
Marc Rowan, a billionaire CEO of one of the world’s largest private equity firms who has worked to suppress support for Palestinian rights both in Congress and at the University of Pennsylvania.
Other members of the Executive Board include Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gabriel, real estate attorney Martin Edelman, and World Bank President Ajay Banga. Witkoff, Kushner, Blair, and Rowan also sit on the Gaza Executive Board. There are no Palestinians on either of these boards, or on Trump’s corporate-style board.
The board’s charter grants significant powers to Trump: as chairman, he would have unchecked veto power over the board, full control of its agenda, and control over the membership of the board. These powers are personally vested in him, and he can only be removed by a unanimous decision of the Executive Board–over which he has full power. This means he would likely serve as the board’s chairman beyond his presidency.
The charter does not mention Gaza or Palestinians in the text, making clear that its mandate is meant to extend far beyond Trump’s plan there. Instead, its mandate has grown to potentially encompass all of the world–presenting a serious challenge to the UN. This clearly violates UN Security Council Resolution 2803, which only endorsed the more limited Gaza plan.
For now, Trump’s sights are set on exercising a personal dictatorship over Palestinians in Gaza. But the threat that this poses to international law is clear: if Trump were to attempt to impose the board’s writ on other parts of the world, he could use these sweeping authorities to force Venezuela to hand its oil to oil executives he supports or force Ukraine to cede territory to Russia.
THE TRUMP-KUSHNER HEIST
In his Davos presentation, Kushner promised to export Trump’s economic self-dealing to Gaza. Specifically, Kushner split Gaza into several zones dedicated to money-making ventures that would sacrifice the rights and well-being of Palestinians for foreign corporate profiteering. These ventures include data centers–which are often used to power artificial intelligence and have been noted for their significant impacts on public health and the environment, including on air pollution and water resources–along with so-called high-tech manufacturing and logistics hubs, which, like data centers, would also generate pollution and presumably prioritize the interests of Trump’s enrichment over the needs of Palestinians.
Under this plan, Palestinians would also lose access to much of their agricultural lands in Gaza–99% of which Israel damaged or destroyed–raising key questions about future food security and sovereignty.
The plan also calls for nearly all of Gaza’s coastline to be developed into 180 towers that would be used for tourism. This would effectively cut off Palestinians' access to the sea and maintain Israel’s restrictions on Palestinians fishing from it. Trump has often expressed his desire to personally profit from Gaza’s coastline–this part of the plan would make that a reality.
PLACING PALESTINIANS IN GHETTOS
The land grabs outlined in the Trump-Kushner plan would also cement Israel’s campaign of forced displacement and prevent Palestinians from returning to their homes and lands, confining Palestinians to a handful of areas marked for residential use.
These ghettos would be patrolled by the ISF. The board resolution mentioned above also suggests that Trump and his board will have the power to determine which Palestinians can even enter them. There are no known plans for what happens to excluded Palestinians, leaving them in a precarious position which could result in them being pushed out of Gaza.
According to Drop Site News and Forensic Architecture, Israel has already begun to clear land for one of these ghettos in an area on the southwestern tip of Gaza. Palestinians who enter this area will be forced to subject themselves to biometric data collection–such as facial recognition–and will only be allowed to use digital shekels to purchase goods and services.
While the draft resolution does not outline plans for the distribution of humanitarian aid, the board’s charter places that responsibility under the ISF, furthering the Trump administration’s efforts to sideline and dismantle UNRWA. This would continue to militarize humanitarian aid and could replicate the conditions that led to massacres of Palestinians by Israeli troops and US contractors at sites operated by the GHF.
These ghettos would not only be a boon for surveillance tech firms like Palantir and for financial tech firms like PayPal, but they would also allow Israel to solidify its control over Palestinians.
INDEFINITE OCCUPATION
Israel also would maintain a permanent perimeter around the inside of Gaza under this takeover plan–which would shrink the amount of space for Palestinians to live in. Israel would also maintain control over border crossings, including the Rafah border crossing. This control would enable Israel to maintain its blockade of Gaza and its two-decade long siege on the area indefinitely.
This plan also still leaves the door open for Israel to continue its genocidal violence against Palestinians and renew its campaign for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. Placing Palestinians in a ghetto on the southwestern tip of Gaza would make it easier for Israel to ethnically cleanse Palestinians into Egypt.
Far-right Israeli ministers are already calling for Israel to take this step, and Israel is reportedly crafting a contingency plan for another invasion of Gaza City. These possibilities take on renewed importance as Netanyahu faces upcoming elections and an ongoing corruption trial–renewed Israeli genocidal violence against Palestinians could serve both as a means to bolster popular support and as a pretext to further delay the proceedings in the cases against him.
Find more details on Trump’s corporate-style board and the Trump-Kushner takeover plan covered in the January 20, 2026, January 26, 2026, and February 2, 2026 editions of the Palestine Policy Roundup, and in our policy memos analyzing how the Trump takeover plan perpetuates Israel’s occupation and risks the partition of Gaza.
Cover Photo: Robert V Schwemmer, via Shutterstock. Stock Photo ID: 2730916383