Amid the almost daily flurry of news reports of significant developments in the Middle East, we learned last week of the approval by the Arab League of its much-anticipated proposal for governing and rebuilding Gaza. This was supposedly the Arab League’s response to the “Middle East Riviera” plan being teased and promoted by President Donald Trump.
The Arab League plan is remarkably disappointing for its lack of creativity or originality. And it is doubly disappointing for its failure to confront or address the central issues that drove the Trump threats to which the plan was supposed to respond.
Indeed, the Arab League plan is nothing more than a retread of old thinking, centered on keeping Gazans in Gaza, getting financial and other help from Arab neighbors and the international community, and working toward the creation of a separate Palestinian state alongside Israel. What is astounding is that the plan reflects no recognition of the dramatic new reality that has unfolded around Gaza and its Palestinian population since Oct. 7 and the ascendency of the Trump administration.
The Arab League’s approach is simple. It is also alarmingly incomplete and wholly unworkable. It calls for a committee of Gaza professionals, who would be subordinate to the Palestinian Authority, to run Gaza for six months and oversee the first steps in an internationally funded $53 billion Gaza reconstruction project. The PA would then assume control, to be followed by Palestinian elections within a year. The only clear point in the plan is its rejection of any attempt to displace Gaza residents. But there’s not a hint of how Hamas will be defanged and removed.
Within hours of the Arab League’s triumphant announcement, the Trump administration rejected it, attacking the plan because it fails to “address the reality [of] Gaza.”
Trump may or may not actually pursue his “Middle East Riviera” vision. Indeed, it is entirely possible that Trump’s plan to raze Gaza, resettle its population and redevelop the territory over a multiyear period was another of his policy overstatements, designed to shake up Arab leaders and others with an interest in the region to adopt a more clearheaded recognition of the realities in Gaza and the need for the development of a comprehensive, workable plan.
If Trump’s challenge was a test, the toothless Arab League response failed it.
The resurrection of Gaza must involve more than a simple acknowledgment that the territory is in shambles and needs to be rebuilt. Nothing can be done without a clear acknowledgment that Gaza is run by Hamas thugs and its population is fully under the military and political control of a terror organization. That needs to change. But the Arab League’s “Gaza 2030” plan doesn’t even mention Hamas. And no part of the plan explains how Hamas will be removed to make room for governance and control by a reformed, reconstituted and suddenly trustworthy Palestinian Authority.
Perhaps the Arab League got distracted by reports that the U.S. is negotiating directly with Hamas to free the hostages and end the conflict, or that Trump asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to mediate U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. But as distracting as each of those stories might be, they don’t excuse the Arab League’s lame analysis of Gaza and wholly undeveloped “plan” for its future.
