The Arab League plan for Gaza
Summary: an alternative to Trump’s plan to take over Gaza and turn it into a playground for the wealthy has emerged from an Arab League Summit in Cairo but while it promises much it is short on detail about how reconstruction is supposed to be achieved.
On Tuesday in Cairo the Arab League unveiled its plan for Gaza in an effort to head off the Trump plan to ethnically cleanse the Strip and create a holiday destination for wealthy tourists. The League’s five year plan consists of three stages: a six month emergency relief programme to house and provide for Gaza’s distressed citizens followed by reconstruction and governance efforts. The cost was set at US$53 billion with an implied assumption that much of that figure would be picked up by the Gulf states.
The plan was long on glossy images of what a rebuilt Gaza will look like with residential, business, and essential infrastructure in place, plus an airport, seaports and hotels, all of this to happen by 2030 with the Gazans remaining in place presided over at some point by a reformed and reimagined Palestinian Authority. However it was short on crucial details such as how Hamas will be disarmed as a militia and dislodged from government.
President Sisi in unveiling the plan was clear that the reconstruction was to run alongside a path to statehood for Palestine. But there again there was no concrete detail on how that would be achieved. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday the Assistant Secretary-General of the Arab League Hossam Zaki said that the Palestinian Authority had the “moral authority and the administrative capability and know how” to govern Gaza. That will come as a surprise to many Palestinians living under the PA in the Occupied West Bank who view the regime of the octogenarian Mahmoud Abbas as an enabler of the Israeli occupation and the organisation he presides over as manifestly corrupt and incompetent.
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President Donald Trump posted a late-night video on social media with an AI-generated vision for the future of Gaza.
The plan was barely off the printer’s press before it was rejected out of hand by Israel and the US. Both the Americans and the Israelis said it did not “address the reality.” For the Israelis that meant reiterating their call for Palestinians to vacate Gaza. As the country’s foreign ministry put it “with President Trump's idea, there is an opportunity for the Gazans to have free choice based on their free will. This should be encouraged!"
A spokesperson from the US National Security Council dismissed the plan saying it “(did) not address the reality that Gaza is currently uninhabitable and residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance." Then again the spokesperson did not address the reality that the Netanyahu government is currently blocking all humanitarian aid to the Strip thus ensuring the unlivability he claimed to be concerned about.
Yesterday it was reported the Israelis plan to step up the blockade by cutting off water and electricity to bring maximum pressure to bear on Hamas through abusing the civilian population in yet another Israeli violation of the ceasefire deal. Such tactics are war crimes but that is of no matter to Washington.
Indeed in President Trump’s much embellished nearly two hour speech to the joint sitting of Congress on Tuesday evening he barely touched on the Israel-Gaza conflict. At one point he said “we are bringing back our hostages” and at another he observed that:
A lot of things are happening in the Middle East, people have been talking about that so much lately, with everything going on with Ukraine and Russia. A lot of things are happening in the Middle East. Rough neighbourhood, actually.
He was much more engaged in talking about what he regards as his achievement in bullying Ukraine to the table and forcing its president to accept the humiliation heaped upon him in that infamous Oval Office meeting. President Zelensky had no choice after Trump order the pause of weapons delivery. But Zelensky’s acceptance of all the Americans were demanding only encouraged further attacks: on Wednesday Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz announced the US was pausing intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
The bully in the school yard tactics being used against Ukraine may be working to Trump and Putin’s advantage but such an approach will not yield results in the Middle East. Gone are the days when America can command its authoritarian allies in the region to do its bidding. In rejecting the Egyptian plan so peremptorily Trump runs the risk of alienating his friends amongst the Arab states. Pursuing his Riviera on the Med is not something they are going to be somehow bulldozed into accepting.
While Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia had earlier condemned the Israeli blockade the Arab League Summit declined the opportunity on behalf of all its 22 members to unequivocally denounce the latest thuggish tactics of Israel, aided and abetted by Donald Trump. It seems that everyone in positions of power is tiptoeing around the bully in chief, everyone except the Canadians. When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dropped the gloves and called Trump’s tariff attack “dumb” Canadians stood up and cheered. A note perhaps to the Trump whisperers, chief among them Sir Keir Starmer, that softly, softly doesn’t work with Donald Trump.
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