Facing domestic pressure after firing the head of the main internal security agency, the Shin Bet, for the first time in Israel’s short history and near-daily demonstrations by families of the Israeli prisoners held in Gaza demanding the full implementation of the ceasefire deal reached between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resorted to his common tactic of sparking a new military assault in the hope of maintaining his hardline government and saving his own future.
Netanyahu has already been violating the temporary ceasefire deal since the end of the first stage in early March in order to pressure Hamas to accept changes to that agreement, narrowing its aim to the release of Israeli prisoners, and not ending the war or implementing full withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip. Those violations started with blocking all aid from entering Gaza for nearly three weeks now, and later halting the supply of the extremely needed fuel and electricity. Shortly before dawn on Tuesday, the massacre committed against innocent Palestinian civilians was the latest pressure tactic Netanyahu decided to use to reach his goals.
This dangerous escalation came at a time Egypt has been working relentlessly, together with Qatar and the United States, to reach an acceptable settlement on the way to implementing the Egyptian-Arab-Islamic plan for the reconstruction of the devastated Gaza Strip which has gained wide-ranging international support.
Following Washington’s initial, mixed response to the Egyptian plan, US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace envoy and personal confidant, Steve Witkoff, has been praising the Egyptian effort, especially after the important meeting held in Doha last week with foreign ministers of key Arab allies of the US: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. The meeting was also attended by a senior Palestinian Authority official close to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told reporters that, during the meeting with Witkoff in Doha on 12 March, there was an agreement that the Arab-Islamic plan should serve as the foundation for rebuilding Gaza.
After the plan was put together by Egypt, it became the official Arab plan following its approval and adoption by the emergency Arab Summit Cairo hosted on 4 March. A few days later, the Organisation of Islamic Conference, made up of 57 nations, held a meeting in Saudi Arabia and announced its endorsement of the Arab plan, making it officially an Arab-Islamic plan.
Support for Egypt’s plan has not stopped there. The UN secretary-general, the African Union as well as the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany and Italy have all issued official statements praising the Egyptian proposal and pledging support for the five-year, detailed plan. It would therefore be fair to describe it as an internationally backed initiative.
Several renowned former diplomats and scholars have also written essays this week calling upon the US administration and world governments to support the Egyptian plan. The Washington Post ran an editorial entitled, “The Arab plan for Gaza should be taken seriously,” while a similar opinion peace in Israel’s daily Haaretz bluntly stated, “Yes to Egypt’s Gaza Proposal, No to Population Transfer and Endless War.” The Egyptian effort was concluded in an exceptionally short time after Trump sent shockwaves through the entire region by putting forward a proposal that ran contrary to all internationally accepted principles aimed at settling the long-standing conflict between the Palestinians and Israel.
Trump simply threatened to liquidate the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom and ending Israel’s illegal occupation of their land by suggesting the removal of 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza into Egypt and Jordan while carrying out an ambitious reconstruction plan aimed at turning the Strip into an international tourism hub that would serve all “people of the world” except Palestinians.
President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, while praising Trump’s commitment to end the war in Gaza and his desire to be a peacemaker, stressed that Egypt would never take part in imposing an unjust settlement on Palestinians. The core of the Egyptian plan, accordingly, was to carry out the reconstruction of Gaza according to a phased schedule without any need to remove the Palestinian people from their land.
Abdelatty explained that the plan proposes a 15-member committee of Palestinian technocrats from Gaza, unaffiliated with any faction, to run the Strip for six months, pending agreement among the Palestinian factions. The committee would oversee a transitional period during which the Palestinian Authority (PA) would gradually assume administrative and governance responsibilities.
On security, the Arab-Islamic plan states that existing Palestinian police forces in Gaza, who report to and are paid by the PA, would be retrained to maintain stability and enforce the law. According to Egypt’s foreign minister, Egypt and Jordan have already started retraining Palestinian security forces in preparation for them being deployed to fill the security vacuum.
A crucial part of the Arab-Islamic plan has been stressing the importance of re-establishing the Palestinian Authority’s presence in Gaza and reinforcing the territorial unity between Gaza and the West Bank as the foundation of a future Palestinian state. Thus, while aiming to end the war in Gaza as an immediate goal, Egypt was fully aware that without reviving the peace process and giving Palestinian people hope that there remained to be a path to establishing their own state, any ceasefire reached would be temporary and a new round of war and violence is bound to break out.
In this framework, the Arab-Islamic plan proposes that the UN Security Council should authorise an international peacekeeping force in Occupied Palestinian Territories, with clear mandates in Gaza and the West Bank aimed to support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
The ball is now in the US and world courts, and with the Arab-Islamic plan at hand, there is a clear pathway not just to ending the vicious war in Gaza that left more than 60,000 Palestinians dead and missing, but to reaching a permanent settlement to one of the world’s long-standing bloody conflicts and ending the injustice of the racist occupation of the Palestinian people.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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