Boston Consulting Group develops plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza to Somalia

L'Orient-Le Jour

5 days ago

Consultants from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) presented a plan to "temporarily relocate" Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Somalia and Somaliland, the Financial Times reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
According to the British financial daily, two American BCG consultants provided pro bono assistance to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which in May secured a monopoly on Gaza aid distribution — sidelining other humanitarian NGOs — with support from the United States and Israel.
Their work included drafting a reconstruction plan for the enclave, including a report estimating the cost of relocating a quarter of Gaza's population to foreign countries. The plan was presented to the U.S. administration as well as other Middle Eastern governments and stakeholders, the report said.
The outlet also reported that two staff members from the Tony Blair Institute, headed by the former British prime minister, participated in the working group alongside BCG representatives and Israeli businessmen, under a project titled 'The Great Trust.'
Preliminary discussions with Somaliland
Several potential destinations were considered for hosting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza, including Somalia, Somaliland (a self-declared independent region of Somalia), the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan.
These scenarios echoed previous leaks from March, when the plan was initially conceived, revealing that U.S. and Israeli officials had approached some East African countries about accepting Palestinian refugees — despite internal instability and widespread poverty in those regions.
BCG's involvement in what critics have described as a postwar ethnic cleansing blueprint for Gaza was first revealed in July by the same newspaper. In response to backlash, the firm publicly distanced itself from the project and announced in June that it had fired the consultants involved, stating they had repeatedly misled senior management about the nature of their work. BCG declined to comment beyond its prior public statements.
U.S. officials reportedly held preliminary talks with Somaliland about a broader deal that would include establishing a U.S. military base in return for American recognition of Somaliland's independence.
'By temporarily and voluntarily accepting Palestinians, a country could benefit economically from a population influx,' said one source close to the project, estimating $4.7 billion in economic gains for host countries over four years. 'But the modeled countries weren't chosen based on actual negotiations. The goal was to assess the economic impact of scenarios suggested by President Trump.'
Trump had previously mentioned discussing with Egyptian and Jordanian leaders the idea of hosting Palestinians and proposed evacuating all 2.1 million Gaza residents to transform the enclave into a "Middle East Riviera."
No substantial progress has been made on these mass expulsion proposals, which U.N. officials have likened to "ethnic cleansing" and which have drawn strong condemnation from Israel's European allies. Egypt and other Arab states have firmly rejected the idea of absorbing large numbers of Palestinians, citing fears of long-term settlement and destabilization — similar to what happened after the refugee influxes of 1948 and 1967.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that GHF had proposed the establishment of 'humanitarian transit zones' (HTZs) to concentrate Gaza's Palestinian population both inside and outside the enclave, possibly in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
This idea — promoted publicly by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz and reportedly approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Haaretz — was described by UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, as a plan to establish 'concentration camps.' UNRWA estimates that over 90 percent of Gaza's population has already been forcibly displaced after 22 months of Israeli military operations.