Here are some details of plan on table during Trump-Netanyahu meeting
The plan put forward by Trump has been drafted in collaboration with Israel and the institute run by Tony Blair, who was the United Kingdom’s prime minister during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq based on false claims of weapons of mass destruction.
The plan considers appointing him as the head of a newly established entity called the Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA), which would administer Gaza after Hamas is removed, for up to several years.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on Monday released a document that it said contained the full power structure of the authority, which puts senior international diplomats and businesspeople at the top and the Palestinians running things on the ground at the bottom.
The international board of GITA, which will initially be based in Egypt or elsewhere near, but outside Gaza, due to the chaotic situation created by Israel on the ground, could include a UN official, renowned Egyptian businessmen, and Muslim members in an attempt to build credibility.
It will reportedly have an executive secretariat, with five commissioners operating under it to oversee humanitarian affairs, reconstruction, legislation, security oversight, and coordination with the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is urged to undergo reforms for a promise that it would take charge of governance at an undisclosed future timeline.
Below all of them, will be a Palestinian technocratic authority appointed by the board to handle some implementation on the ground as a multinational stabilisation force takes charge of border crossings, Gaza’s coastline and “perimeter zones” near Israel and Egypt’s borders that are currently occupied by Israel.
‘Hell no’: Rumoured Tony Blair appointment as head of Gaza transitional administration prompts backlash
There have been rumours that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair could lead Gaza for a transitional period as part of the post-war plan proposed by Trump. Several figures have reacted to this, blasting the idea.
Husam Badran, member of Hamas’s political bureau, said the Palestinian people are not “minors needing guardianship”, adding that any decisions about “Gaza or the West Bank are internal Palestinian matters to be resolved by national consensus, not imposed by outside powers”. He added that Blair should be on trial for his role in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, not administering the Gaza Strip. “Any plan linked to Blair is an ill omen.”
Reacting to the circulating rumour, Rima Hassan, a Franco-Palestinian member of the European Parliament, has said: “Decolonising Palestine means decolonising it from ALL its colonisers.”
Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister and author, said it was “classic Blair” to promote himself for such a role. “A war criminal himself, he demands a five-year appointment to run the site of Israel’s genocide on behalf of Donald Trump in the finest tradition of white settler colonial projects,” he wrote on X.
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, told Times Radio that Blair’s record in the Middle East, which involved backing George Bush in a ruinous and illegal war against Iraq in 2003, was “not one to be proud of… He does not have the confidence and trust of Palestinians.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN expert for Palestine, posted: “Tony Blair? Hell no.”
And the historian and author William Dalrymple said: “Given Blair’s superb record in the Middle East, what could possibly go wrong?”
