When President Trump said last month that he wanted to move all of Gaza’s roughly two million residents out of the strip to Egypt and Jordan and transform the territory into a beachfront “Riviera” for tourism, Arab leaders rejected the idea and hurried to present their own grand plan.
At an emergency Arab summit in Cairo on Tuesday, they laid out their vision: Rebuild Gaza without forcing out the Palestinians who live there. Sideline Hamas, the armed group that currently controls Gaza, and appoint a committee of skilled bureaucrats to initially run the strip before handing over to the internationally recognized Palestinian government in the West Bank. Then reunite the territory with the West Bank as one Palestinian state — a long-held dream of Palestinians and many Arabs across the Middle East.
But given that the plan leaves several central questions still unanswered, and Israel remains deadlocked with Hamas over key issues, Gaza’s postwar future appears no closer to a resolution.
For one thing, the statement signed by Arab countries on Tuesday night did not directly address whether or how to disarm Hamas. While both Israel and the Trump administration say that dismantling the group’s armed wing is nonnegotiable because of the threat it poses to Israel, that is a deal breaker for Hamas.
The furthest the document goes is an oblique reference to Gaza’s security being managed by a single armed force and a single legitimate authority. Elsewhere, it calls for the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza alongside the West Bank in the future, implying that it would be the authority in charge of security, not Hamas.
That is not to say that Arab countries want to see Hamas keep its weapons. Egypt, which hosted the emergency summit and borders Gaza to the south, has serious national security concerns about Hamas. Other Arab countries agree.
Still, even if they were unified on the need to demilitarize Hamas, no one seems to have a plan for how to do so or who would enforce it. The group, which welcomed the statement on Tuesday, has expressed no openness to giving up its weapons.
Another fundamental impasse centers on the issue of Palestinian statehood. Less road map than wish list, the Arab countries’ calls for establishing a Palestinian state are almost certain to run headlong into Israeli objections.
Israel’s hard-right government, along with much of the population, opposes granting the Palestinians their own country. Though the United States has not explicitly scrapped its decades-old support for a two-state solution to the conflict, the Trump administration seems to be moving in lock step with Israel on many issues, raising questions about its commitment to Palestinian statehood.
Arab leaders say that turning Mr. Trump’s “Gaza Riviera” notion into reality would mean destroying any prospect of a Palestinian state. But Israel has embraced it, with Israel’s foreign ministry saying on X on Tuesday night that Mr. Trump’s idea was “an opportunity for the Gazans to have free choice based on their free will. This should be encouraged!”
The Arab blueprint laid out on Tuesday is most solid when it comes to rebuilding Gaza, a process that the document says could last until 2030 and cost $53 billion. It calls for a conference next month to mobilize international funding and investments for the plan, but it is unclear who will put money down.
Wealthy Gulf Arab states are often called on to pay for reconstruction and development across the Arab world. Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, has also suggested that Europe could pitch in; and António Costa, the president of the European Council, which brings together European Union leaders, said in a speech at Tuesday’s summit that the bloc “stands ready to provide concrete support.”
Yet Gulf monarchies who would likely have to foot much of the bill, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are wary of spending so much to rebuild Gaza only to see the territory destroyed again if war returns.
Only two Gulf heads of state attended the Cairo summit — the leaders of Bahrain and Qatar — undercutting the strong, unified front Egypt had hoped to present and raising questions about the Gulf countries’ support for the plan.
