Rebuilding Gaza remains a “puzzle” for Arab leaders

(CLO) Disagreeing with US President Donald Trump's plan for Palestinians in Gaza, Arab leaders are also struggling to find common ground for a counter-solution.

Working together to find a solution for Gaza

Arab leaders are meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh to respond to US President Donald Trump's plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza and turn it into a Middle Eastern "Riviera".

Saudi Arabia will host a conference of key Arab countries on Gaza reconstruction. Photo: SUSTG

The meeting – which includes Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf Arab states – will take place ahead of the Arab League summit on March 4. A meeting of Muslim countries is also expected to take place shortly afterwards, according to Egypt's Foreign Ministry.

President Donald Trump's proposal last month that the US could take control of Gaza, develop it into a version of the "Riviera of the Middle East" and relocate Palestinian residents to neighboring countries such as Egypt and Jordan has drawn opposition across the Arab world.

Many in the Arab world view any forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza as a death knell for any future Palestinian state. Some countries, such as Jordan and Egypt, fear that taking in large numbers of Palestinians could cause economic and political disruption in their countries.

As a result, Mr Trump's aides later reframed the proposal as a challenge to Middle Eastern leaders, to push them to come up with a better alternative.

Speaking at an investment forum hosted by Saudi Arabia in Miami (USA) on February 21, Mr. Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, said the president's plan for Gaza is not to expel Palestinians, but to change the current mindset and improve the prospects for the Palestinian people.

“He (President Trump) has created this discussion across the Arab world,” Witkoff was quoted as saying by the New York Times. “You have a lot more different types of solutions than before he talked about this.”

With such developments, the meeting in Riyadh can be seen as a necessary step by key Arab countries to untie the knot related to the future of Gaza. And the US also welcomes the move of Arab countries.

“All these countries say how much they care about the Palestinians,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week. “If the Arab countries have a better plan [for Gaza], that would be great.”

Consensus is still a luxury

According to the New York Times, the main idea of ​​the meeting was to discuss a solution in which Arab countries would help finance and supervise the reconstruction of Gaza, while keeping the two million Palestinian residents intact and preserving the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state. But the journey from idea to consensus is still a long one, with no clear exit in sight.

US President Donald Trump's plan to relocate Palestinians from Gaza has received opposition from the Arab world. Photo: Pedestrian

There have been a number of bold plans put forward, but none have really attracted enough support. The latest comes from UAE property tycoon Khalaf al-Habtoor, who has laid out an ambitious blueprint to rebuild Gaza in “years, not decades.”

But the key issue remains the governance of Gaza after the war.

An article in Egypt's Al Ahram Weekly said Cairo is proposing a 10- to 20-year plan to rebuild Gaza with funding from Gulf Arab countries, while removing Hamas from the strip and allowing Gaza's 2.1 million Palestinian residents to remain.

But Israeli leaders have repeatedly said they would oppose any post-war plan that paved the way for Palestinian sovereignty. That view, in turn, clashes with Arab leaders who insist they would only support a proposal that at least nominally paved the way for a Palestinian state.

For any plan to govern Gaza, Arab leaders want the approval of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the internationally recognized body that governed Gaza until Hamas seized control of the territory nearly two decades ago.

But the head of the Palestinian Authority, President Mahmoud Abbas, has been wary of any plan that does not give him full control of Gaza. And Hamas has said it is willing to cede control of civilian affairs to another power but has refused to disband its military, a position unacceptable to both Israel and Mr Trump.

A mountain of challenges lies ahead.

Despite the urgency from Arab states to present a convincing counter-proposal to US President Donald Trump, rebuilding Gaza remains a “long and complex” journey, the World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations said. Governance and financing issues may need to be addressed with international support – issues that are also contentious and difficult to resolve.

The three international organizations estimated in a joint statement on Tuesday that restoring essential services, including health and education, and clearing debris in Gaza alone would take three years. Rebuilding the entire devastated area would take 10 years and cost more than $50 billion.

Funding for the Gaza reconstruction plan could include public and private contributions, possibly from the EU and Gulf Arab states, and there could be an international donor conference for Gaza in April, a CNN source said. But the plan could also fail if Israel, which has controlled Gaza's borders long before Hamas' October 2023 offensive, refuses to cooperate.

So far, Israel has supported US President Donald Trump's plan to reduce the population in Gaza, and the Israeli Defense Ministry recently announced plans to establish a "Gaza Residents Voluntary Migration Management Board" to facilitate the migration of Gaza residents who want to migrate.

The World Bank, the EU and the United Nations estimate that $50 billion is needed to rebuild Gaza after the strip was severely damaged by war. Photo: UNRWA

Israel’s role in the Arab plan is crucial. Any reconstruction effort would be in vain if the fragile ceasefire in Gaza fails, plunging the territory back into war. And the prospect of Gaza remaining silent is far from certain.

The future of Gaza, and the more than 2 million Palestinians living in this narrow strip of land, remains uncertain. Analysts say it is very difficult for any solution to be agreed upon at the conference of key Arab countries in Riyadh, and even more difficult for the solution (if any) to be implemented quickly and effectively.

Nguyen Khanh

Source: https://www.congluan.vn/tai-thiet-gaza-van-la-cau-do-voi-cac-nha-lanh-dao-a-rap-post335520.html