Arab leaders convened for an emergency summit in Cairo on Tuesday, facing pressure to come up with something that has proved elusive for decades: a comprehensive Arab vision for Gaza, just as the Israel-Hamas cease-fire is teetering and Israel, buoyed by President Trump’s backing, holds the upper hand.
“Arab Summit: Rescue mission,” read a stark headline on Saturday in Al Ahram, Egypt’s state-owned flagship newspaper, over an article outlining the “uphill task” facing Arab leaders.
The delegates were expected to ratify an Egyptian proposal that would involve spending $53 billion to rebuild Gaza without, as Mr. Trump has suggested, moving Palestinians out of the strip, according to a preliminary draft of the proposal, which was shared with The New York Times by an Arab diplomat.
The proposal also calls for putting a committee of technocrats and other figures unaffiliated with Hamas in charge of the territory for an initial six-month period. The Egyptian government did not respond to a request for comment, but the editor in chief of Al Ahram Weekly, a state-owned media outlet, confirmed the document’s authenticity.
The Arab summit was called in response to Mr. Trump’s proposal last month to expel Palestinians from Gaza, send them to Egypt and Jordan and turn the territory into a tourism hub — an idea that much of the world has rejected as tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
Egypt, Jordan and other Arab allies of the United States have pushed back hard on the plan, saying it would destroy any remaining hope of a Palestinian state and destabilize the entire region.
Mr. Trump appeared to soften his position recently, saying that he was “not forcing” his Gaza idea on anyone. But the Arab world remains deeply concerned. Adding to those worries is the uncertainty surrounding the cease-fire in Gaza, which has paused the bloodshed there for six weeks and seen Israel and Hamas exchange Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages.
In the latest crisis to shake the agreement, Israel began blocking all aid and goods from entering Gaza on Sunday, attempting to strong-arm Hamas into extending the first phase of the truce, which just expired, and swapping more prisoners for hostages without moving toward a permanent end to the war.
Israel also recently drove tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and ruled out allowing them to return, intensifying Arab fears that an Israel emboldened by Mr. Trump’s support will attempt to annex the West Bank. Israel says it is responding to a rising threat of militancy from the West Bank. The Israeli military denies any forced evacuations, but has said it ordered people to leave buildings close to what it said were militant hide-outs.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has plagued the Middle East for decades. But recent events have brought the question of how to resolve it to a head, forcing Arab countries to scramble over the last few weeks to come up with a counterproposal to Mr. Trump’s.
Beyond insisting on Palestinian statehood and rejecting forcible displacement, Arab countries have not yet agreed on an alternative vision for Gaza — let alone one that Palestinian political factions, Israel, the United States and other countries would sign on to.
Many major questions remain, such as how to govern Gaza, how to manage its security, how to rebuild it and how to sideline Hamas, which remains the most powerful force in the enclave.
And any plan would have to get around a more fundamental issue: While Arab leaders will support only a framework that would include at least a nominal path toward Palestinian statehood, Israeli leaders are against embarking on a path that would lead to Palestinian sovereignty.
The leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Gulf Arab states met last month in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to strategize ahead of Tuesday’s summit in Cairo, which will include all 22 members of the Arab League as well as the United Nations secretary general and the European Council’s president.
But the leaders of two of the most powerful Gulf nations — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — did not show for the Cairo summit, raising questions about whether there is unified Arab support for Egypt’s plan.
According to the draft proposal expected to be discussed on Tuesday, the transitional governing committee would pave the way for the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized body that administers parts of the West Bank, to “fully return” to Gaza. The authority administered Gaza until Hamas, which had won parliamentary elections in 2006, seized control of the strip by force in 2007.
Gaza and the West Bank should be united as one state, Arab officials argue, and must be linked in any conversations about Gaza. The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has so far appeared reluctant to give his blessing to any governing arrangement that does not put him fully in control of Gaza.
One open question concerns who will manage Gaza’s security after the war permanently ends. Egypt is proposing an international force be deployed in Gaza and the West Bank, according to the draft, which does not specify which countries might supply troops to such a force.
Hamas officials have said they would be willing to hand over control of civilian affairs to a governing committee of which the group was not a part, as long as Gaza’s postwar future was determined by Palestinian “national consensus,” according to a statement from the group on Tuesday.
But they refuse to demilitarize in Gaza, a crucial demand of both Israel and Mr. Trump. The American president’s top Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” last month that Hamas “has to go.” An official media outlet belonging to Hamas said on Tuesday that “the resistance’s weapons are a red line.”
The Egyptian proposal acknowledges that it will be difficult to disarm Palestinian groups in Gaza. But the draft suggests that the armed Palestinian resistance will only disappear once the Palestinians secure statehood and rights, saying the issue can be resolved “if its causes are removed through a clear horizon and a credible political process that ensures the legitimate rights of Palestinians.”
The Egyptian proposal is most detailed when it comes to Gaza’s reconstruction. Palestinians in Gaza would stay in temporary housing units made of shipping containers on seven sites throughout the territory, with an average of six people living in each. In the first phase, which would last six months and cost $3 billion, rubble and unexploded ordnance would be cleared, 1.2 million people would be moved into prefabricated temporary housing units and 60,000 partially destroyed housing units would start to be rehabilitated.
In the next phase, which Egypt estimates would cost $20 billion and last until 2027, utilities and permanent housing would be rebuilt, and rubble would be used to expand Gaza’s surface area into the sea. Industrial zones, a fishing port, a seaport and an airport would be built during a final phase costing $30 billion and lasting until 2030, according to the draft.
Under this framework, oil-rich Gulf nations would likely pay for Gaza’s reconstruction, though Egyptian officials have also suggested Europe could also contribute funds. The draft says that Egypt will convene a donor conference to drum up funding and investments “as soon as possible.”
Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, said in a news conference on Saturday with the Palestinian prime minister and foreign minister that Egypt had volunteered to train Palestinian police forces to be deployed in Gaza while the territory is rebuilt.
Jordan is also training Palestinian police personnel, according to the Egyptian draft proposal, which said other countries could possibly join that effort.
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