Trump wanted to rebuild Gaza. Now the plan is down to one pilot camp: Report

3 min readJul 17, 2026 02:04 PM IST

Palestinian residents save their belongings from destroyed buildings following an Israeli airstrike last night, at al-Bureij refugee camp, central Gaza Strip (AP Photo)

US President Donald Trump’s once-ambitious plan to rebuild Gaza has been scaled back to a limited pilot project near Rafah, according to a Guardian report, marking a dramatic retreat from proposals to reconstruct the entire Palestinian enclave.

The recovery proposal, featuring a temporary camp for a fraction of Gaza’s displaced people, a Palestinian administration, local police and a small international security force, is not expected to take shape before the end of the year, facing further delays.

In recent weeks, incremental steps have been announced. The project has seen some progress with the arrival of Moroccan and Kosovan officers in Israel to help establish a planned International Stabilisation Force (ISF) tasked with safeguarding the pilot camp.

A logistics base at the Kerem Shalom crossing is also nearing completion to help the future force store vehicles, equipment and other material.

However, the preparatory work on the pilot camp near the southern Gaza city of Rafah is yet to begin, with major progress unlikely before Israel’s 27 October elections.

Israel blocked reconstruction work in Gaza

Israel has violated the Trump-brokered ceasefire several times since it was declared in October 2025. It blocked the reconstruction work in the war-torn territory and also limited the flow of humanitarian aid.

According to The Guardian report, the Western diplomats in Jerusalem believe that the best hope of progress in the besieged Palestinian enclave would be a new Israeli government.

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One of the diplomats in Jerusalem argued that Trump’s Board of Peace (BoP) should pursue the limited progress in Gaza to avoid abandoning the recovery plan and creating room for extreme factions in the Israeli government with radically different plans for the territory.

“The aim is just to keep something going, keep the ball in play, because if you stop, there are others with a more extreme agenda just waiting to jump in and take over, and they are talking about wholesale population transfer and colonisation,” the diplomat said.

There are growing concerns that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing the threat of electoral defeat, will gamble on renewed military action, with a new all-out offensive in Gaza before the October elections.

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