By Andrew Mills, Pesha Magid and Ahmed Shalaby
DOHA/RIYADH (Reuters) – Arab states who were swift to reject President Donald Trump’s plan for the U.S. to take control of Gaza and resettle its Palestinians are scrambling to agree on a diplomatic offensive to counter the idea, five sources told Reuters.
Trump’s plan, announced on February 4 during a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, has infuriated the Palestinians and Arab countries and upended decades of U.S. diplomacy focused on a two-state solution.
But Arab states trying to devise an alternative plan have yet to tackle critical issues like who will foot the bill for Gaza’s reconstruction — estimated by the U.N. at more than $50 billion — or how the Strip will be governed, according to sources familiar with diplomatic discussions ahead of the meeting. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Leaders of Gulf Arab countries plus Egypt and Jordan are due to meet later on Friday in Riyadh for what Saudi Arabia said would be an unofficial meeting within the framework of “close brotherly relations”.
Riyadh’s statement made no official mention of discussions about Gaza. But the sources told Reuters that the meet up, which was preceded by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s arrival on Thursday, was to discuss a mainly Egyptian proposal to counter Trump’s plan to “clean out” Palestinians from Gaza and resettle most of them in Jordan and Egypt.
Cairo’s proposal could include up to $20 billion in funding over three years pledged mostly by wealthy Gulf and Arab states, but no commitments have been made clear yet, the sources said.
“Details are not clear and there is confusion among stakeholders about what the plan contains,” one of the sources, an official involved in negotiations over Gaza told Reuters.
A source close to Saudi Arabia’s royal court told Reuters that no proposal had been finalised ahead of Friday’s talks.
It remains unclear if the Arab leaders will be able to reach a consensus on a unified alternative to Trump’s plan ahead of an emergency meeting of the Arab League set for March 4 in Cairo.
Sisi called on Wednesday on the international community to adopt a plan to rebuild Gaza without displacing Palestinians.
Palestinians and others in the region are concerned Trump’s proposal would destabilise the region, repeating the “Nakba”, or catastrophe in the 1948 war at the birth of the state of Israel.
In a defining moment of pain for the Palestinians, almost 800,000 of them fled or were forced away from their homes and villages. Many were driven into refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where many of their descendants languish more than 75 years later.
HIGH STAKES
Palestinians say they face discriminatory treatment in some of those countries and frequently complain that they have been abandoned by Arab states. Arab states have repeatedly said they are doing their best to advance the Palestinian cause.
The stakes are especially high for Egypt and Jordan. Sisi is concerned that if a large number of Palestinians moved to his country, they would include members of Hamas, which he sees as a security threat.
Jordan, which contains a large Palestinian population, fears that the resettlement plan is a recipe for radicalism that will spread chaos through the Middle East, jeopardize the kingdom’s peace with Israel and even imperil the country’s survival.
For the kingdom, Trump’s talk of resettling some two million Gazans comes dangerously close to its nightmare of a mass expulsion of Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank – echoing a vision long propagated by right-wing Israelis of Jordan as an alternative Palestinian home.
At the same time, countries like Egypt and Jordan are deeply dependent on U.S. financial and military support and Gulf Arab countries need Washington for security. So they may not be in a position to take a tough stand against Trump.
Speaking at a Miami conference hosted by a non-profit linked to the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, U.S. envoy Steven Witkoff said Trump’s Gaza comments were more about trying different solutions to those proposed over previous decades.
Key players like Jordan or the United Nations have not had a hand in composing the ideas Sisi is expected to present, the official involved in the Gaza negotiations said, adding that there was no clarity around how Gaza would be governed.
Thorny issues like Hamas’ future role aren’t expected to be addressed in public statements yet, with a fuller political and economic framework expected at the Cairo Arab League summit in March, two Jordanian sources said.
DISAGREEMENTS OVER GOVERNANCE
Israel has repeatedly said it would not tolerate any role for Hamas in Gaza after the war. At the same time, Hamas’s rival, the Palestinian Authority, has little support among Palestinians in the enclave and the West Bank, according to opinion polls.
The Egyptian proposal includes a national committee to govern Gaza and reconstruction via a fund created with money from the Gulf and other foreign countries, the U.S. and financing organisations, two Egyptian sources said.
The two sources said these were mere ideas at the moment as they required Arab coordination and financing commitments in order to go through.
Funding commitments are expected to be crucial to make any Arab alternative palatable to Trump. But oil-producing Gulf states have said they are weary of funding reconstruction only for a cycle of violence and destruction to repeat itself.
A Palestinian Authority proposal for Gaza governance is also expected to be presented on Friday. It includes the creation of a new deputy prime minister who would serve as Gaza governor and would report directly to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
But Cairo has proposed a different plan where a so-called community committee of non-partisan professionals operates border crossings, services within the Strip and reconstruction.
Disagreements over governance were evident on Friday when Hamas expressed dismay over the Arab League assistant secretary general’s comments that the group should resign from all governance in the interest of Palestinian people.
Hamas said it has shown flexibility in formulating political and administrative ways of managing Gaza in several discussions.
“Now Arab states have to put something on the table and there is a lot more riding here” following Trump’s proposal, Aziz Alghashian, a Saudi analyst who studies Palestine-Gulf relations said.
(Reporting by Andrew Mills in Doha, Pesha Magid in Riyadh, Ahmed Shalaby and Nidal al Mughrabi and Ahmed Shalaby in Cairo; additional reporting by Suleiman Al Khalidi in Amman; Writing by Andrew Mills; Editing by Maha El Dahan, Michael Georgy, William Maclean)
