Report: Palestinians Don’t Trust Arab World to Follow Through on Alternative to Trump Gaza Plan

By John Hayward (Breitbart)

The National on Wednesday reported that Palestinians are looking at the Arab plan for rebuilding Gaza with “cautious optimism,” but they apparently lack faith in Arab leaders to make the five-year, $53 billion scheme work.

“Unless the U.S. approves it, the implementation will be extremely difficult,” opined Gaza resident Mohammed Al Lala.

The whole point of the “Arab plan” was supposed to be rebuilding Gaza without the United States, because President Donald Trump’s proposal to relocate the Palestinians while turning Gaza into a lush resort community was a non-starter with everyone in the region, except for the Israelis.

Other Palestinians who spoke to The National expressed reservations about the Arab world’s ability to root out the corruption that has long paralyzed Gaza development, and doubted the reconstruction effort would work without buy-in from Israel, which has rejected the Arab plan.

One of Israel’s criticisms is that the Arab plan relies on the Palestinian Authority (PA) for administering postwar Gaza. The Israeli Foreign Ministry on Wednesday accused the PA of “corruption” and “support for terrorism.”

“It is noteworthy that Hamas’s vicious terror assault isn’t mentioned, and there isn’t even a condemnation of this murderous terrorist entity, despite the documented atrocities,” said the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

“Now, with President Trump’s idea, there is an opportunity for the Gazans to have free choice based on their free will. This should be encouraged!” the Israeli foreign ministry said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has ruled for 20 years after winning a four-year term in 2005, still refuses to make a firm commitment to relinquishing power or holding new elections. Hamas also refuses to step aside, although it promised to “facilitate the process” of reaching “national consensus” among Palestinians.

The Trump administration also shot down the Arab plan on Wednesday, pointing out that Gaza is largely “uninhabitable” after the war started by Palestinian terrorists on October 7, 2023, so relocating the population as Trump suggested is the only practical approach.

The Times of Israel (TOI) on Tuesday dismissed the Arab plan as little more than a political maneuver by Egypt to “stymie” the proposal favored by Trump and the Israelis. In addition to its unrealistic assumptions about the challenges of rebuilding Gaza, the plan does not address “major questions that need to be answered about Gaza’s future regarding the role of Hamas and which countries will provide the billions of dollars needed for reconstruction.”

The coalition behind the Arab plan showed signs of internal stress this week, as Egypt’s partners in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are uncomfortable with Hamas continuing to play a major role in Gaza. The proposal document produced by Egypt did not mention Hamas by name, merely listing the presence of “multiple armed Palestinian factions” in Gaza as a “challenging” problem to overcome.

As with most Arab statements on Gaza over the years, the Egyptian plan insisted that only giving the Palestinians a state carved out of Israel could bring lasting peace, but that prospect became far more remote after the savage Palestinian attack of October 7.

Some observers thought President Trump’s goal all along was to maneuver the Arab oil states into bankrolling the reconstruction of Gaza – and taking on the headaches of forging a reasonably dependable Palestinian government. It should be noted that the Arab plan calls for $53 billion in spending, but does not commit Arab states to providing the money. Instead, the plan envisions heavy financial support from the Western world and the United Nations.