Frustrated by an undisguised US-backed Israeli plan to empty Gaza of its Palestinian population, Arab leaders are preparing for what many expect to be a plan to stand up to the relocation scheme.
The strategy to respond to US President Donald Trump’s bizarre plan to remove the Palestinians from the Strip is expected to be endorsed by an Arab League emergency leadership summit meeting in Cairo on 4 March.
Since he started his second term on 21 January, Trump has been doubling down on a proposal for the transfer of the Palestinians from Gaza and for the US to take over “long-term ownership” of the enclave.
Both Egypt and Jordan have vehemently opposed the idea, and the Arab public has been united in rejecting the plan, seen as the ethnic cleansing of nearly 2.3 million Palestinians.
All eyes are now on the leaders of the 22-member League, who have so far been reluctant to say anything critical of Trump’s galling proposal but wish to demonstrate independence from his administration’s policy and rally around the Palestinians.
The mood in the Arab world is one of anxiety, however, as doubts remain regarding Israel’s negotiations with Hamas over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aims for the war, including the future of the Palestinian group which has been ruling Gaza since 2007.
Ahead of the summit meeting, the leaders of five countries in the Arab Gulf, Egypt, and Jordan met in Saudi Arabia on Friday to discuss how best to respond to Trump’s ideas and to Israel’s war objectives, which include the destruction of Hamas.
Though Saudi Arabia said the meeting would be unofficial and held within “the framework of the close brotherly relations that bring together the leaders,” the postwar Gaza proposal was at the top of their agenda.
There was no final statement from the “brotherly meeting,” but the governments of the Gulf have stood with both Egypt and Jordan, which have firmly rejected Trump’s proposal and reaffirmed their stance against the displacement of the Palestinians.
The rejection of the proposal by the UAE and Saudi Arabia is particularly significant because the UAE was the first Gulf Arab country to normalise its relations with Israel during Trump’s first administration and Saudi Arabia has reportedly been negotiating a normalisation deal.
After Trump made his proposal to redevelop the Strip after resettling its Palestinian inhabitants elsewhere, the Arab states pledged to work on a counter plan for post-war reconstruction without relocation.
The Cairo Summit should endorse an Arab package of proposals for post-war reconstruction and governance in Gaza to counter Trump’s idea to redevelop the Strip under US control and displace its Palestinian residents.
An Egyptian plan is now emerging as central to the Arab push for an alternative to Trump’s proposals. Cairo is believed to have been working with the Gulf states to draft a plan to be presented at the summit in Cairo for regional consensus.
Egyptian Prime Minister Mustafa Madbuli said on Thursday that the plan is currently under review before it is officially released. He did not disclose any details but said the Gaza reconstruction might take three years.
But according to various media reports, Egypt is proposing that the Palestinian population be transferred into safe zones in the enclave where they will be provided with makeshift homes as part of an initial phase of a blueprint that envisages multiple stages.
It is expected that the first phases would focus on the removal of tens of millions of tons of rubble followed by a reconstruction phase to build safe housing units and other infrastructure destroyed by the 15-month war.
To facilitate this, a fund would be established in order to provide concrete financial support to help Gaza stand on its own feet and be habitable again.
No information is available about the sources of finance nor on a timetable for the reconstruction which according to some estimates could take more than 15 years.
The World Bank has put Gaza reconstruction costs at $52 billion. It has estimated that damage to physical structures alone will take around $30 billion to address, with housing accounting for 53 per cent of the damage. More money will be needed to remove 40 million tons of rubble.
A key decision required as part of the plan is a political track that would provide the administrative and security management of Gaza under arrangements pushed by Israel for the day after a lasting ceasefire is established.
Again, details on this crucial phase are sketchy, but talks suggest that the plan could involve the complete suspension of any administrative, political, or other roles for Hamas and other militant resistance movements.
Therefore, an alternative to Hamas will have to be found. The first such warning came in remarks by Arab League Chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit on 11 February, when he called on Hamas to step down from its leadership role in Gaza.
While the issue remains part of the Gaza plan to be determined by the Arab leaders, it is widely thought that it will revolve around reinstating the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza, possibly alongside local governance bodies, to support a two-state solution and an independent Palestine alongside Israel.
Hamas has categorically rejected the idea, and the group’s senior officials have said that Hamas will not disarm and may even grow after the war on Gaza, warning other countries against cooperating with Israel in the enclave.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has insisted that “on the day after the war in Gaza, there will be no Hamas and no Palestinian Authority,” adding that he is committed to Trump’s plan “to create a different Gaza.”
Amid these anxieties, Trump has showed no sign of completely abandoning his plan for a Gaza takeover and the displacement of its population, even with no buy-in from Egypt, Jordan, and the rest of the Arab countries.
Over the course of several weeks since he made his controversial proposal, Trump has continued to take a blowtorch to diplomatic norms and waved aside objections to the idea and has not given in to flat-out rejections from the leaders of Egypt and Jordan.
In an interview last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated that Trump’s Gaza proposal was in part aimed at pressuring the Arab states to make their own postwar plans that would be acceptable to Israel. He even suggested that the Arab countries might send in troops to combat Hamas.
“If the Arab countries have a better plan, then that’s great,” Rubio said. But “Hamas has guns,” he added. “Someone has to confront those guys. It’s not going to be American soldiers.”
“And if the countries in the region can’t figure that piece out, then Israel is going to have to do it,” he said.
Judging by their public declarations so far, the Arab leaders are expected to rally behind the Palestinians and reiterate their support for an independent Palestinian state, including conditioning normalisation with Israel on the two-state solution.
Yet, there are reasons to believe that Israel and the Trump administration will not accept any initiative by the Arab Summit that does not respond to Israel’s demands to end the war without the involvement of Hamas.
Worse still, Israel has not abandoned its range of potential objectives in the Gaza war that go beyond disarming Hamas, decapitating its leadership, and ending its rule in Gaza to retaking the Strip.
With Netanyahu’s procrastination on the ceasefire, the future of the Gaza looks increasingly uncertain amid the Israeli military’s plans for what it terms the “voluntary migration” of the Palestinian population from the enclave and Israel’s apparent determination to carry out its goal of liquidating the Palestinian cause.
As the Arab leaders gather for their milestone summit meeting in Cairo next week, the region is entering unexplored territory and facing Netanyahu’s goal to use his “victory” in Gaza to “dramatically change the face” of the Middle East.
They should not only seek to define a unified Arab position to confront Trump’s proposal to empty Gaza of its people, but also act as a collective bloc on the emerging Israeli strategy to reshape the Middle East.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 February, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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