Arab Plan for Gaza Leaves Thorny Issues Unanswered

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.