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Boston Consulting Group consultants modelled relocating Palestinians to Somalia and Somaliland during a project on postwar Gaza, according to people familiar with the work.
Multiple potential destinations were listed in a complex spreadsheet created on behalf of Israeli businessmen who were sketching plans for the redevelopment of Gaza after the war between Hamas and Israel.
BCG’s involvement in the postwar modelling project was revealed by the Financial Times last month, prompting the consulting firm to disavow the work and say the partner in charge had been told not to do it.
Some assumptions underpinning the model, which have not been previously reported, included countries where hundreds of thousands of Gazans opting for relocation could be moved. Somalia and the breakaway region of Somaliland were on the list, along with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan.
The assumptions track media reports from around the time of the model’s creation in March that the US and Israeli governments had sounded out countries in east Africa about taking Palestinian refugees, despite civil conflict and high levels of poverty in the region.
US officials had held preliminary conversations with the breakaway province of Somaliland about a wider deal that would also include establishing a US military base in the territory in return for recognition of its statehood.
President Donald Trump had earlier said he was talking to the leaders of Egypt and Jordan about taking Palestinians, after floating the idea of clearing Gaza of its entire 2.1mn population while it is redeveloped as the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
No progress has been made on the relocation plans, which UN officials compared to ethnic cleansing and was condemned by Israel’s European allies. Egypt and other Arab states have strongly opposed taking in large numbers of Gazans, fearing it would be a permanent resettlement that would create domestic instability.
The BCG model allowed for a variety of scenarios and estimates for the costs of what was described as a temporary relocation programme. Rent and food subsidies for people who took the proposed package were set at lower rates in some countries than others.
The modelling project grew out of BCG’s work helping to set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the Israeli- and US-backed aid distribution scheme designed to supplant the traditional UN-led system in Gaza. BCG stopped that work in May amid international criticism of the GHF.
BCG consultants developed the model for a group of Israeli businessmen who had helped design the GHF and were working on postwar plans. Their calculations were included in a slide deck produced by the businessmen for circulation to the US administration along with other governments and stakeholders in the Middle East.
The slide deck envisaged that 25 per cent of Gazans would decide to relocate outside the enclave and a majority of those would not return. BCG projected $4.7bn in economic benefits for countries that took in Palestinians during the first four years.
“By accepting the Gazans who relocate temporarily and voluntarily, a country will get an injection of population that will have an economic benefit that clearly could be significant,” said one person familiar with the work. “But the countries in the model were not picked based on a knowledge of specific discussions. The idea was to understand the economic issues related to options that President Trump had put on the table.”
Assumptions about the relocation scheme underpinned further estimates about the costs of providing temporary and then new permanent housing for Gazans, along with a variety of other redevelopment plans.
BCG staff produced estimates for the cost of removing debris and unexploded munitions, building infrastructure such as a rail line and a new port, developing a new healthcare and education system, including workforce development, and for private investments in tourism and advanced manufacturing.
The model assumed these investments produced pay-offs over the course of 10 years in the form of revenues from housing, construction, security, manufacturing, healthcare, infrastructure and other economic activity.
It also allowed the calculation of employment, GDP growth and asset values over 10 years plus social impacts such as the numbers of children in school and the number of available hospital beds.
BCG fired the partners involved in the work for GHF and the modelling project in June, saying they had repeatedly misled their superiors about the nature of their work.
The firm told a UK parliamentary committee last month that the lead partner had been told “not to engage in any reconstruction-related work that did not include involvement of the affected population” and carried out the project in secret. The team did not bill for the work, which was viewed as “business development”, according to people familiar with the matter.
BCG declined to comment beyond its previous public statements.
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