Trump’s Peace Board Wants to Fix Gaza in Three Years. Experts Say That’s Impossible.

Jared Kushner told an audience in Davos that Gaza’s reconstruction could be complete in three years. It was an optimistic projection that drew attention for its ambition — and sharp skepticism from the experts who have studied the scale of destruction most closely. As Trump’s Board of Peace held its first meeting Thursday, that timeline question hovered over the proceedings.
The UN, European Union, and World Bank estimate reconstruction will cost approximately $70 billion. Their forecasters have said that clearing rubble and demining alone — the necessary precursor to any construction — would take far longer than three years. Gaza’s infrastructure has been devastated at a scale that has few modern precedents.
The three-year claim also depends on conditions that do not currently exist. Hamas has not disarmed. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said no reconstruction will begin until Hamas fully gives up its weapons, including an estimated 60,000 automatic rifles. The transitional governing committee cannot yet enter Gaza. International stabilization forces have not deployed.
Kushner’s Davos slides showed a reimagined Gaza with a coastal tourism strip, industrial zones, and data centers. The vision is not inherently implausible as a long-term aspiration. But the gap between where Gaza is today and where Kushner’s slides showed it going is measured not in years but in decades — assuming the political conditions for reconstruction can even be achieved.
Trump claimed this week that board member countries had pledged $5 billion toward the effort — a significant sum but a fraction of what experts say is needed. The pledges were not documented publicly. The combination of an unrealistic timeline, unverified funding, and unresolved political prerequisites makes the three-year reconstruction promise one of the most aggressively optimistic claims in recent diplomatic memory.