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CAIRO — Arab leaders adopted a unified plan for the future of the Gaza Strip at an emergency summit in Egypt's new administrative capital Tuesday, to counter President Donald Trump's proposal for the mass displacement of Palestinians there and to help salvage a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that is at risk of collapse.
Heads of state and senior officials from the 22-member League of Arab States approved an Egyptian proposal for a phased reconstruction plan for Gaza that would keep Palestinians there while shutting Hamas out of any governing role and eventually restoring the Palestinian Authority to power.
The $53 billion plan, laid out in a 91-page document obtained by The Washington Post, would proceed in three phases, from an initial period focused on clearing debris to a more comprehensive reconstruction of communities and infrastructure over the span of five years. It proposes moving Palestinians among seven sites with temporary housing while segments of the enclave are rebuilt sequentially. Egypt and Jordan would take the lead in training a Palestinian police force, "to enable the Palestinian Authority to return to its governing duties in the Gaza Strip," the document says.
The fact that the summit was held during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month when life and work typically slow down, was a sign of the urgency with which leaders in the Middle East are scrambling to prevent Trump's plan from coming to fruition. In early February, Trump suggested Gaza, destroyed by 15 months of war, should be transformed into a luxury, U.S.-controlled "Riviera of the Middle East," and its more than 2 million Palestinian residents displaced to countries such as Egypt and Jordan.
The Palestinian people "have the right to live in peace on their land," Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit told summit attendees. "We cannot accept illegal American projects and visions in the region."
Israel's Foreign Ministry criticized the Arab League on Tuesday, saying its final joint statement was "rooted in outdated perspectives."
"Now, with President Trump's idea, there is an opportunity for the Gazans to have free choice based on their free will," Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein wrote on X. "Instead, Arab states have rejected this opportunity, without giving it a fair chance, and continue to level baseless accusations against Israel."
Under the plan adopted Tuesday, a "Gaza Administrative Committee" made up of technocrats would oversee the first six months of the "early recovery" period. During the initial phase, direct negotiations should begin between Israel and Palestinian representatives over "final status issues," including territorial borders and the status of the contested city of Jerusalem, the text of the plan says.
The summit's final statement calls for the U.N. Security Council to deploy international peacekeeping forces to Gaza and the West Bank to enhance security "for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples."
The proposal punts on the issue of weapons held by Palestinian militants, while emphasizing that "a clear horizon and a credible political process" for Palestinian self-determination is a prerequisite for disarmament. The issue of what happens to Hamas - and especially its weapons - is one of the most fraught in debates over Gaza's future. Israel and its allies insist Hamas must be eradicated as a military threat; Hamas leaders, meanwhile, have said in recent days that the group won't lay down its arms.
The final statement from the summit expressed member states' "categorical rejection of all forms of violence, extremism, and terrorism" that contradict international law - but that does not preclude Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation, according to an Arab diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy.
The gathering also reaffirmed "the collective Arab stance that rejects displacement under any name," Aboul Gheit said in a news conference.
Egypt and Jordan both view a major influx of Palestinians to their territories as an existential threat. And countries around the region, where publics are strongly pro-Palestinian, have long called for an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
"By coming up with a practicable, pragmatic alternative plan for Gaza, the Arab states are putting the onus on Trump to accept their proposal and, in that way, transfer all the pressure on them onto [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to agree to end the war on these reasonable terms," Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said after the summit.
Arab leaders rallied behind the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday - but emphasized the necessity of reforming the Ramallah-based governing body, which is seen as weak, sclerotic and riddled with corruption. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed the Egyptian plan and said the authority would take over Gaza after "restructuring and reforming the current cadres in the Gaza Strip and having them receive the proper training in Egypt and Jordan."
He called for Palestinian national unity - "one rule, one regime and one arm in the Gaza Strip and West Bank." The Palestinian Authority will revamp its institutions and hold elections "in the coming year" once conditions allow, he added.
Crucially, Abbas also agreed to a long-standing demand from donor countries to appoint a deputy, as concerns grow about his advanced age and reluctance to relinquish power. And he announced a general amnesty for all ex-members of Fatah, his political movement - which would include powerful political rivals living in exile.
Abbas, 89, has not held elections in nearly two decades. Netanyahu has repeatedly said he would not accept the Palestinian Authority playing a role in postwar Gaza.
In a statement late Tuesday, Hamas voiced its support for the reconstruction plan, the proposed technocratic governing committee and the summit's call for national elections. But senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Mardawi told Al Jazeera that all Palestinian factions must be consulted before inviting international forces to Gaza - and allied militant group Islamic Jihad rejected the idea of a peacekeeping mission outright.
Implementing the reconstruction plan will be immensely challenging: Cairo is counting on wealthy Arab countries to pick up the tab, along with Western donors and global financial institutions. But Persian Gulf states have voiced concerns privately about funds being misused by the Palestinian Authority or diverted by Hamas, according to a former Egyptian official with knowledge of the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
To address these fears, the plan proposes that the money be put into a trust fund under international supervision. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said after the summit that his government would seek to rally financial support at an upcoming gathering of Islamic countries, before making the rounds in Europe and the United States. Egypt will also hold a pledging conference next month, he said.
But Israel appears far from willing to enter into discussions about a final political resolution to the conflict. Members of Netanyahu's right-wing government strongly oppose the creation of an independent Palestinian state, and the idea has grown increasingly unpopular among the Israeli public in the wake of the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Those attacks, during which Palestinian militants killed about 1,200 people - mostly civilians - and kidnapped an additional 250 people, shook Israeli society and sparked Israel's retaliatory war in Gaza, which has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians there.
The current ceasefire in Gaza appears close to collapse. An initial, 42-day phase brought a fragile calm to the war-weary enclave and resulted in the exchange of 33 Israeli hostages for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners before it expired Saturday. But Israel has refused to meaningfully engage in negotiations over Phase 2 of the agreement, during which Israeli troops are meant to withdraw completely from Gaza.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, accused Hamas of not accepting a proposal to extend the first phase, which he says was presented by Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff. The Trump administration has not confirmed that Witkoff generated this plan, but U.S. officials said they support Netanyahu's positions.
Hamas has said it wants to proceed to the second phase of the ceasefire. But on Sunday, Netanyahu announced that Israel would block all aid to Gaza, accusing Hamas, without providing evidence, of diverting the assistance.
"We have a hierarchy of actions to apply pressure on Hamas, while simultaneously preparing militarily to return to fighting," Omer Dostri, a spokesman in the Israeli prime minister's office, told Galei Israel Radio. "We are not ruling out the possibility of cutting off water and electricity in Gaza."
Speaking at the Arab summit, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres urged Israel and Hamas to uphold the agreed-upon ceasefire framework and return to the negotiating table.
"We must avoid at all costs the resumption of hostilities that would plunge millions back into the abyss of suffering and further destabilize the region," he said.
Meanwhile, "humanitarian aid is not negotiable," he added. "It must flow without impediment."