By Andrew Mills, Yomna Ehab and Nafisa Eltahir
CAIRO (Reuters) -Egypt urged Arab leaders on Tuesday to adopt its reconstruction plan for Gaza that would cost $53 billion and avoid resettling Palestinians, in contrast to U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Middle East Riviera” vision, according to a copy of the plan.
It was expected that the proposal would be accepted in the final communique to be released at the end of a summit in Cairo on Tuesday evening. Reuters has seen a draft of the final communique.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said at the summit he was certain that Trump would be able to achieve peace on what he referred to as the Palestinian issue.
The major questions that need to be answered about Gaza’s future are who will run the enclave and which countries will provide the billions of dollars needed for the reconstruction of the devastated territory.
Sisi said Egypt had worked in cooperation with Palestinians on creating an administrative committee of independent, professional Palestinian technocrats entrusted with the governance of Gaza.
The committee would be responsible for the oversight of humanitarian aid and managing the Strip’s affairs for a temporary period, in preparation for the return of the Palestinian Authority (PA), he said.
The other critical issue is the fate of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the PA’s rival, which triggered the Gaza war by attacking Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the PA, said he welcomed the Egyptian idea and urged Trump to support such a plan that would not involve displacing Palestinian residents.
Abbas, in power since 2005, also said he was ready to hold presidential and parliamentary elections if circumstances allowed, adding his PA was the only legitimate governing and military force in the Palestinian Territories.
An architect of the 1993 Oslo peace accords with Israel that raised hopes of Palestinian statehood, Abbas has seen his legitimacy steadily undermined by Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank, which he oversees. Many Palestinians now regard his administration as corrupt, undemocratic and out of touch.
Any reconstruction funding would require heavy buy-in from oil-rich Gulf Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which have the billions of dollars needed.
The UAE, which sees Hamas and other Islamists as an existential threat, wants an immediate and complete disarmament of the group, while other Arab countries advocate a gradual approach, a source close to the matter said.
A source close to Saudi Arabia’s royal court says the continued armed presence of Hamas in Gaza is a stumbling block because of strong objections from the United States and Israel, who would need to sign off on any plan.
Hamas was founded in 1987 by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood during the first Palestinian Intifada, or uprising.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri on Tuesday rejected Israeli and U.S. calls for the group to disarm, saying its right to resist was not negotiable.
Abu Zuhri told Reuters the group would not accept any attempt to impose projects, or any form of non-Palestinian administration. He said the presence of foreign forces on Gaza territory would also be rejected.
Since Hamas drove the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza after a brief civil war in 2007, it has crushed all opposition there.
ALTERNATIVE TO TRUMP PLAN
Egypt, Jordan and Gulf Arab states have for almost a month been consulting over an alternative to Trump’s ambition for an exodus of Palestinians and a U.S. rebuild of Gaza, which they fear would destabilise the entire region.
The draft final communique firmly rejects the mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.
Egypt’s Reconstruction Plan for Gaza is a 112-page document that includes maps of how its land would be re-developed and dozens of colourful AI-generated images of housing developments, gardens and community centres. The plan includes a commercial harbour, a technology hub, beach hotels and an airport.
The reconstruction vision projects that rebuilding the enclave would take five years and the first two-year phase would cost $20 billion and involve building 200,000 housing units.
Israel was unlikely to oppose an Arab entity taking responsibility for Gaza’s government if Hamas was off the scene, said a source familiar with the matter.
However, if Arab states want to disarm Hamas and move it away from politics it won’t be easy.
Sources familiar with Hamas said the group had only lost a few thousand fighters in the Gaza war, in which more than 48,000 people have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials.
Israeli officials say around 20,000 Hamas fighters have been killed and the group has been destroyed as an organized military formation.
But the Israeli military says small groups of Hamas fighters are still able to stage hit and run attacks using weapons stocks that remain hidden in tunnels and other storage points.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie in Jerusalem, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Pesha Magid in Riyadh, Andrew Mills in Doha and Jana Choukeir in Dubai and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Alex Richardson and Jon Boyle)
