You probably haven’t heard of Yakir Gabay. Until a few weeks ago, neither had most people tracking Middle East policy, and that’s exactly how he liked it.
Gabay made his billions the quiet way: European real estate, German apartment blocks, the kind of unglamorous assets that generate steady cash and don’t make headlines. He operates out of Cyprus, not Jerusalem. Frankfurt stock listings, and far away from the news and front pages. For two decades, he stayed far from Israeli politics. Didn’t even vote in recent years.
Then October 7 happened, and something shifted. Within days, he was drafting what would become the reconstruction plan now attached to US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” framework for Gaza. The White House put his name on the Gaza Executive Board, and suddenly everyone wanted to know: Who is this person, and what does a real estate investor know about rebuilding a war zone?
When Gabay talks about the plan, in Hebrew, behind closed doors, with the intensity of someone who’s spent the last 16 months thinking about little else, he sounds like he’s explaining a complicated deal structure, not a framework for ending a war.
How Trump and envoy Jared Kushner see victory: bring the hostages home, don’t return to fighting, dismantle Hamas. The last part is the hardest: disarmament.
He knows the obvious loophole: Hamas could just absorb itself into the new police force, weapons and all. But he thinks there’s a path. There will be people in the force who aren’t Hamas. He has been heard saying, “There will be enough forces.” He also likes asking, “Is everything perfect?” “No,” he tends to say, “but the alternative isn’t good either. Going back to fighting isn’t good.”
The way he sees it, the sequencing creates its own logic. If the first mission fails, voluntary disarmament through pressure from Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, and the international community, then the IDF goes in and neutralizes Hamas’s weapons by force. But there’s a chance, he believes, that the pressure works. That Hamas, isolated and surrounded by Arab states that have signed on to the framework, chooses survival over resistance.
He can be heard saying in the halls of Davos, “Right now, Hamas is isolated. The soldiers dying and getting wounded, that’s stopped. Even if the IDF has to go back in, it’s part of the terms. Even the worst scenario is better than the scenario from five months ago.”
The reconstruction part is his
Gabay wrote the reconstruction and rebuilding component himself. Not the security stuff, not the demilitarization. He’s emphatic about that.
The plan, he explains, was built over more than a year by businesspeople from around the world, people like Tony Blair. It gained momentum during Trump’s campaign and accelerated in recent months. Kushner and colleague Steve Witkoff assembled the core team. “Everyone has different expertise. Everyone can give their opinion and advice on the issues.”
There’s a deadline for Hamas’s disarmament, so said Kushner on Thursday, a time frame of “100 days,” but with hedges. It’s more than a paraphrase, but they won’t let it drag out. If they see the conduct isn’t cooperative, the goal is to give it a chance. Gabay believes voluntary disarmament can happen.
He has been following military, security, and political issues very closely for decades. Not involved. His approach is that the way previous rounds ended sourly, the axis of evil with Iran at the head, was a mistake not to confront them as has happened during this war.
October 7, he tends to say, woke him to action. He thought: This time, my capabilities can change the face of reality. Other businesspeople heard about his work a year and a half ago. The White House had asked him to develop something even during Joe Biden’s term. He has good relationships with Tony Blair and Kushner, and when Trump won the elections, it became easier to push the issue. This administration’s model fits better for Gabay: The strong hand, the business lingo.
It’s his first time being publicly involved in anything political. He doesn’t like the spotlight. It’s one of the prices he’s been paying since his name was revealed. He is one of those businesspeople who probably pay to make sure their name doesn’t appear in the media, not the other way around. But the experience of thinking through ideas, translating them into presentations and videos, sitting with people, and watching it become reality lifts his heart. Everything is volunteer work, he tends to tell those who speak with him about these matters.
It’s taking almost all his time now. A price his family is paying too. But for him, it’s a large contribution, an elevation of the heart.
The Turkey and Qatar problem
One thing that confuses outside observers: Turkey and Qatar, both Hamas supporters, are part of the framework. Gabay sees this as a feature, not a bug.
Trump’s consideration of the Board of Peace is in full consensus from all sides. This is the American model that’s succeeded so far, beyond Hamas. He explains to those who ask, mainly Israelis, that, “We would have gotten a veto in the UN if Turkey and Qatar weren’t on the BoP. Ninety percent of the people [on the BoP] support our ideas.”
The UN Security Council approved the Board of Peace to handle peace in Gaza instead of the UN itself, which has an overwhelming majority against Israel. When asked about this new entity during Davos discussions, he says that the BoP is like a sovereign. A body with authority. Miraculously, there was no veto. The day before the UN decision, Arab states supported this resolution. “Turkey and Qatar are a drop in the ocean,” he tends to say.
When participants in Davos pressed him on whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fully supports the plan (it doesn’t sound like it from the outside), he was careful but positive. From the acquaintance that’s developed in recent work, he sees him as completely businesslike and professional.
On the peace process more broadly, he’s pragmatic to the point of fatalism. “If we solve Gaza, then we’ll solve that too,” he says about the West Bank to diplomats who ask that million-dollar question. “Because in Judea and Samaria, the difference is the mixing of populations. Gaza… Israel doesn’t want Gaza,” he told a participant at the World Economic Forum on Thursday.
Does he really believe in this initiative? His opinion is that the other initiatives failed. Gabay thinks it’s worth being flexible. An administration that supports us like this has the leverage to put pressure.
He’s hawkish on security issues. Very hawkish. But also willing to take risks on frameworks that might work. The Jewish side of his identity has always been there: Jewish education, philanthropy, dozens if not hundreds of contributions. He co-chairs the Israeli-American Council’s New York gala with Miriam Adelson. After October 7, he got more involved: the Israeli Center for Addictions and Mental Health, Beit Izzy Shapiro, the Rashi Foundation, working with displaced Israelis.
The honest bet
Here’s what Gabay is actually betting on: that material conditions shape political possibilities. That if you can deliver reconstruction fast enough and at scale, if Gazans see schools opening and clinics functioning, the gravitational pull toward normal life outweighs the pull toward resistance.
He’s also betting that Egypt will be the key. He thinks the Egyptians are cooperating a lot. They’re the most dominant factor in the game.
And he’s betting that even if things go wrong, they’ll go wrong in a better way than before. That baseline shift, from endless war to conditional peace with enforcement mechanisms, is itself progress.
Is he right? I don’t know. He might be the only person in the world who thinks Gaza’s biggest problem is that no one credible has ever actually written a detailed reconstruction plan and gotten the capital commitments lined up in advance. Maybe he’s delusional. Or maybe everyone else has been solving the wrong problem.
But he took the job anyway. Left his comfortable life managing European apartment buildings, stepped into the spotlight he hates, and spent 16 months translating the messiest political problem on earth into PowerPoint slides and funding mechanisms.
He believes this can happen; he tells many, as someone who’s done the math.