When President Trump declared last month that he wanted to move all the two million residents of Gaza outside the strip into Egypt and Jordan and transform the territory into a “Riviera” on the beach for tourism, the pressure was on the Arab leaders horrified by the idea of finding their great plan.
On Tuesday, during an Arab emergency summit in Cairo, they put their vision: to reconstruct Gaza without forcing the Palestinians who live there. Sideline Hamas, the armed group that currently controls Gaza and appoints a committee of qualified bureaucrats to manage the strip for six months before delivering power to the Palestinian government recognized internationally in the West Bank. Then bring together the territory with the West Bank as a Palestinian state-A long-standing dream of Palestinians and many Arabs throughout the Middle East.
Despite all the speeches on statoma and discussion of walnuts and bolts on temporary housing units for the Palestinians, however, the future of the post -war period of Gaza does not appear closer to a resolution.
While the Arab countries presented a unified front against the idea of forcing the Palestinians forced and a detailed reconstruction model of $ 53 billion, their plan leaves the central questions still unanswered. And the Arabs have little influence that they can use to push Israel or Hamas to break their Deadlock on different key issues, especially because the Trump administration openly sides with Israel.
“With any respect, the plan was very technical, as if it came from an engineering advice,” said Ghassan Khatib, a Birzeit University’s political scientist in the West Bank. “And we need a political plan.”
But a political solution has never really been in the hands of the Arabs. In the end, this must come from Israel, Hamas and the United States, analysts said. The three remain in an impasse, raising fears that the fighting will explode again in Gaza.
The inability of the Arab countries to fill these divisions were evident in Tuesday’s declaration. Less Road Map than the wish list, the proposal has skipped on how the power to Gaza would have been transferred by a post -war government committee to the Palestinian authority and reiterated that the Palestinians must be granted to their own state, a possibility that the right -wing Israeli government has rejected.
The declaration signed by the Arab countries on Tuesday evening also avoided dealing directly if or how to disarm Hamas, a crucial question. While both Israel and the Trump administration say that the dismantling of the group’s armed wing is not negotiable due to the threat it represents for Israel, demilitarization is a deal for Hamas.
Further away from the document, it is an oblique reference to the security of Gaza managed by a single armed force and a single legitimate authority. Elsewhere, he asks the Palestinian authority to govern Gaza next to the West Bank in the future, implying that it would be the responsible authority of security, not Hamas.
This does not mean that the Arab countries want to see Hamas keep their weapons. Egypt, who hosted the emergency summit and borders Gaza to the south, has serious national security concerns about Hamas. Even Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and some other Arab countries want to see it.
However, even if they were united on the need to demilitarize Hamas, nobody seems to have a plan on how to do it or who would apply it. The group, which welcomed the declaration Tuesday, did not express openness to give up its weapons.
Another fundamental impasse focuses on the question of the Palestinian state. The requests of the Arab countries to establish a Palestinian state are almost sure of running headlong in Israeli objections.
Arab leaders say that transforming the notion of Trump’s “Gaz Riviera” into reality would mean destroying any perspective of a Palestinian state. Israel embraced the proposal, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel who said on Tuesday evening that the idea of Mr. Trump was “an opportunity for the Gazas to have a free choice based on their free will. This should be encouraged!”
A spokesman for the Trump administration, Brian Hughes, seemed to support the idea of the American president when he was asked of the Arab plan on Tuesday evening, stating that the Arabic plan “does not face the reality that Gaza is currently uninhabitable”, according to Reuters.
Although the United States have not explicitly demolished its ten -year support for a two -state solution to the conflict, the Trump administration seems to move in bulk with Israel about many issues, raising questions about its commitment to the Palestinian state. Israel, however, is also strongly dependent on the United States, which gives Mr. Trump Room to distort Israel’s arm, analysts said.
“The only thing that really matters at this point is: what will Trump continue?” Paul Salem, an expert from the Middle East based in Washington, said.
Mr. Trump keeps an eye on a great deal in which Saudi Arabia would agree to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for a security pact with the United States. Saudi Arabia has conditioned any agreement on achieving the Palestinian state, attenuating the prospects of the agreement.
But with the ceased the fire in Gaza who vacilla and Israel who tightened the grip on the West Bank, Salem said that the Palestinians were in such a weakened position that Mr. Trump could perhaps force an agreement.
“They could be able to accept things that perhaps they wouldn’t have accepted,” said Salem.
Tuesday the Arabic project was more detailed when it comes to reconstructing Gaza, a process that the document says that it could last until 2030 and cost $ 53 billion. He asks for a conference next month to mobilize international funding and investments for the plan, but it is not clear who will put the money.
The rich Arab States of the Gulf are often invited to pay for reconstruction and development throughout the Arab world. The Egyptian Foreign Minister, Badr Abdelatty, also suggested that Europe could enter; And António Costa, president of the European Council, who brings together the leaders of the European Union, said in a speech at the top of Tuesday that the block “is ready to provide concrete support”.
Yet the gulf monarchies that probably should have paid most of the bill, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, wary of spending so much to reconstruct Gaza just to see the territory destroyed again if the war returns.
Only two heads of state of the Gulf participated in the top of Cairo – the leaders of Bahrain and Qatar – underestimating the strong and unified front of Egypt had hoped to submit and raise questions about the support of the Gulf countries for the plan.