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The Tony Blair Institute (TBI) has been implicated in what many believe to be a blueprint for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, following revelations that the institution founded by the former UK Prime Minister participated in a controversial postwar planning project proposing the mass displacement of Palestinians. 

Details of TBI’s involvement was uncovered in a Financial Times investigation. It revealed that the scheme, developed by Israeli businessmen and modelled by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), included economic incentives to forcibly “relocate” up to half a million Palestinians and transform the besieged enclave into a luxury investment zone dubbed the “Gaza Riviera”.

BCG developed financial models estimating the costs of displacing up to 500,000 Palestinians from Gaza as part of a project internally labelled “Aurora”. The modelling included so-called “relocation packages” worth around $9,000 per person, which were framed as voluntary but widely condemned as a thinly veiled scheme for transferring the population of Gaza. 

Simultaneously, staff from TBI are said to have participated in message groups and planning calls where they circulated internal proposals for a postwar economic transformation of Gaza. These included visions of a “Gaza Riviera”, artificial islands modelled on Dubai’s developments, blockchain-based trade zones and low-tax manufacturing hubs. 

Though TBI later distanced itself from the final plan, its documented participation has raised serious concerns about its complicity in efforts to reengineer Gaza’s demography under the guise of reconstruction.

According to the FT, BCG was hired in October 2024 by Orbis, a Washington-based contractor, to aid in setting up the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli and US-backed aid project now marred by the killing of more than 600 Palestinians seeking food. The aid operation is militarised, staffed by private US contractors and guarded by Israeli forces. Humanitarian organisations have boycotted the initiative while UN has described GHF as a “fig leaf” for Israeli war aims.

Read: Blair dismisses rumour of role in Israel’s ‘voluntary resettlement of Gazans’

In internal modelling, BCG calculated that removing Palestinians from Gaza would be $23,000 cheaper per person than aiding them in place. One scenario projected 25 per cent of the population—roughly 500,000 people—would leave “voluntarily” under a $9,000 “relocation package”. Critics, however, say any plan to “incentivise” Palestinians to leave the besieged enclave amounts to forced transfer, prohibited under international law.

The Tony Blair Institute, while denying authorship of a postwar blueprint titled “The Great Trust,” has admitted that two of its staff members took part in planning calls and message groups discussing Gaza’s future. That plan includes proposals for artificial islands, special economic zones, and tech-sector development. While TBI denied endorsing population relocation, the inclusion of its staff in planning groups has raised alarms.

Phil Reilly, a former CIA officer now leading security for the GHF, reportedly pitched the project to Tony Blair in March. Though TBI claims, the former UK Prime Minister was “in listening mode”, it acknowledged that its staff reviewed the economic blueprint. 

The entire scheme was prepared for presentation to figures in the administration of President Donald Trump and allied Gulf states. Trump previously advocated turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” and removing its population. 

Critics point to the lethal rollout of GHF’s food distribution in Gaza, which has resulted in hundreds of deaths, as proof of the operation’s militarised, coercive nature. Coupled with the economic modelling for forced transfer, it strengthens concerns that such projects are part of a broader strategy to depopulate Gaza permanently.

READ: Israeli soldiers file petition questioning legality of ‘Operation Gideon Chariots’ in Gaza

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.