Burcu Ozcelik
The highly anticipated Egyptian vision for the future of Gaza was announced in Cairo yesterday, broadcasting consensus across the Arab world against U.S. president Donald Trump’s “Riviera” plan for Gaza.
There is little in the Arab draft proposal that has not been floated previously. Unsurprisingly, and where it challenges Trump head on, is that it calls for reconstruction without the displacement of the Gazan population. While the plan displays a readiness to sideline Hamas, its shortcoming is that it leaves too much unsaid about how Hamas can be militarily dismantled, removed, or transformed. With this left unaddressed, it will face stiff resistance from the United States and Israel.
The fact that the emergency Arab summit took place a full month after the Trump plan was announced is just one indication of the complexities inherent to achieving Arab consensus on this point. The Egyptian draft, while significant for its plan to reconstruct war-torn Gaza by 2030, falls short of specifying how Hamas would be removed. At the same time, it proposes the establishment of a body called the “Gaza Administrative Committee” to run the Strip’s affairs in the first six months of the “early recovery” period, made up of independent Palestinian technocrats.
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