‘They’re trying to get rich off it’: US contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead

Trump administration insiders and well-connected Republican businesses have been jostling to dominate pending humanitarian aid and reconstruction logistics in the shattered Gaza Strip, according to sources and documents reviewed by the Guardian.

With three-quarters of Gaza’s structures damaged or destroyed by two years of Israeli strikes, the rebuilding effort to come – estimated at $70bn by the United Nations – could be a rich prize for companies that specialize in construction, demolition, transportation and logistics.

But there’s no way to issue long-term contracts for reconstruction or humanitarian aid yet: a Board of Peace, chaired by Donald Trump, was endorsed by the United Nations to administer the territory but is not yet in operation. And the mandate of the new Civil-Military Coordination Center is limited.

Parallel to these official efforts, the White House has established its own Gaza taskforce led by Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and Aryeh Lightstone.

The Guardian has learned that two former Doge officials – once assigned to Elon Musk’s effort to slash government and fire federal workers in bulk – are leading the group’s conversations about humanitarian assistance and the postwar reconstruction of Gaza. They have circulated slide decks with detailed plans for logistics operations, including prices, financial projections and the locations of potential warehouses.

US companies are gathering for the spoils. One contender, the Guardian has learned, is Gothams LLC, a politically connected contractor that won a $33m contract to help run the notorious south Florida detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”, where immigrants are housed in tents and trailers.

Documents and three people familiar with the plans say that the contractor had an “inside track” to secure what might be the most lucrative contract it’s ever had. But in an interview on Friday, after questions from the Guardian, the company’s founder, Matt Michelsen, said he had reconsidered his company’s participation and was pulling out, citing security concerns.

Eddie Vasquez, a spokesperson for the White House Gaza taskforce, did not provide answers to detailed questions about the White House-led process. He said in an email that this story “illustrates a fundamental ignorance of how the Gaza team operates and the current state of play. We are at the early stages of planning and there are many ideas and proposals currently being discussed with no final decisions having been made.”

Meanwhile, sources say contractors have been flying to the region in order to meet with influential US officials and potential business partners before the holidays.

“Everybody and their brother is trying to get a piece of this,” one long-time contractor familiar with the process . “People are treating this like another Iraq or Afghanistan. And they’re trying to get, you know, rich off of it.”

$1.7bn for a ‘master contractor’

In November, the UN endorsed Trump’s plan for Gaza.

While Trump and Kushner both have envisioned wealthy resort concepts, most of the international community wishes to see Gaza rebuilt as a livable home for its 2.1 million Palestinian residents. Meanwhile, Israel continues to control half of the Gaza Strip, and has said it will forbid reconstruction on the half overseen by Hamas until the group disarms.

Two former Doge officials were dispatched to the region as planning for postwar Gaza ramped up this fall. One was Josh Gruenbaum, an appointee to the General Services Administration now serving as a senior adviser to the Gaza taskforce. The other was Adam Hoffman, a 25-year-old Princeton graduate, who joined Elon Musk’s Doge efforts last March. Two people who have dealt directly with the junior adviser say that Hoffman has become a driving force in the newest plans.

“The impression is that whatever those guys say is going to happen,” said a person familiar with the process. “That is the perception anyway.”

Hoffman has conservative political activist credentials going back to his teen years. At 14, he worked as a volunteer for the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, according to a 2020 profile by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. And even before finishing college, he briefly worked in Trump’s first administration at the Council of Economic Advisors. At Princeton, he alleged there was antisemitism on campus after a prominent critic of the Israeli government was invited to speak at a solidarity event with Gaza.

Three sources familiar with the process say Hoffman has been soliciting ideas for a new logistics scheme in Gaza. The Guardian has reviewed a planning document, which the sources say was circulated by Hoffman, that details a new “Gaza Supply System Logistics Architecture”.

Labeled “Sensitive but Unclassified”, Hoffman’s planning document calls for a “Master Contractor” to supply 600 humanitarian and commercial truckloads to Gaza per day. It suggests charging a $2,000 fee for every humanitarian load and a $12,000 fee to commercial trucks.

By operating as a licensing entity, the contractor could “earn a fair return” off humanitarian and commercial clients entering Gaza, the document says. If a “Master Contractor” performs apace, the Guardian estimates that they could gross $1.7bn a year on trucking fees alone.

Trucking will be crucially important to any reconstruction efforts in Gaza. Before the war, about 500 trucks entered the enclave each day, providing critical imports to a population that’s lived under Israel’s military blockade for decades.

Since 7 October 2023, Israel has intermittently cut off all entry and exit to Gaza, limiting access to basic goods, including food, fuel and building supplies. While the ceasefire deal reached in October established that 600 trucks of aid would enter the territory daily, Israel has limited entry to an average of only 140 trucks a day.

Historically, the United Nations has participated in the delivery of humanitarian aid across Gaza – once supplying more than 80% of its residents with basic goods, education and healthcare.

It’s unclear what role the United Nations or other longtime humanitarian actors will play moving forward. Israeli authorities control access permits for all groups that work in Gaza, including the for-profit contractors lining up to consider future work with the Board of Peace.

Amed Khan, an American philanthropist who runs the Amed Khan Foundation and delivers medicine to Gaza, said the reconstruction planning is flawed and buffoonish. “None of these people are humanitarians or have backgrounds in humanitarian assistance. It’s a bunch of crap,” he said. “There’s no surge of medicine, no surge of medical equipment.”

The Guardian reviewed a proposal by Gothams, signed by the firm’s chief financial officer and addressed to the Board of Peace. “In response to requests to provide a proposal to the future Board of Peace,” Gothams wrote, it was offering a “fully integrated humanitarian logistics system to support large scale aid operations into Gaza”.

Three sources say Gothams has been the apparent frontrunner to handle logistics, and has been lining up suppliers and subcontractors.

Michelsen, the firm’s founder, is a politically connected Republican who’s donated extensively to Greg Abbott and Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

After a wide-ranging career that brought him in contact with Lady Gaga, 50 Cent and several Silicon Valley tycoons, including executives at Meta and Palantir, Michelsen turned to the disaster-response business, founding Gothams in 2019.

The company has had a remarkable rise in recent years thanks to lush government contracts. It was awarded hundreds of millions in government funding for running Covid-19 programs during the pandemic, and supplying logistics in the booming industry of state-run detention operations.

In 2022, the Texas Observer reported that Michelsen donated a quarter-million dollars to Abbott’s campaign efforts, the same year Texas awarded Gothams a $43m contract.

Michelsen said he donated to Abbott because he likes him: “I support Abbott.”

He told the Guardian on Friday that he was limited in how much he could say about Gaza plans, and was unwilling to discuss Hoffman, Gruenbaum or the process. “I’ve agreed not to share anything about the government,” he said.

Michelsen did say that the plans had changed drastically over the past two weeks, growing in scale. “The original premise has changed,” he said. “This thing has changed massively.”

In his interview, Michelsen said questions from the Guardian had prompted him to pull out of the Gaza contracting effort. “Your questions have really hit me,” he said. He said he’d just made the decision, and was notifying the Guardian before even telling Gothams’ staff. He was concerned about bad publicity, he said, and about potential security risks, if he goes forward.

“Gothams will not be participating,” he said. “I wish them well.”

Michelsen did promise, if he changes his mind again, to let the Guardian know.