Above photo: The Peninsula.
Reject Forced Displacement Of Palestinians.
The Egyptian plan calls for the Palestinian Authority to manage Gaza while rejecting President Trump’s call to ethnically cleanse the strip.
An Arab summit convened in Cairo on 4 March adopted an Egyptian plan for the reconstruction of Gaza in a bid to counter US President Donald Trump’s proposal to forcibly expel Palestinians from the strip while turning it into a “Middle East Riviera” for Israel’s Jewish settlers.
The final statement from the summit called for finding a realistic alternative to the displacement of the Palestinian people and, before that, the categorical rejection of their displacement from their land or within it.
It also condemned the “starvation and scorched earth policies” pursued by Israel to forcibly displace Palestinians and stressed the importance of implementing the second and third stages of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, which call for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the strip.
The statement also condemned Israel’s attacks on Syria and its incursions into Syrian territory while calling on the international community to compel Israel to stop these violations.
A detailed draft of the Egyptian plan obtained by Sputnik envisions setting aside $53 billion to reconstruct Gaza and forming a committee to manage it for six months in preparation for the return of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
As part of the Egyptian plan, an international conference for the reconstruction of Gaza in Cairo will be held later this month. At the same time, a trust fund will be set up to receive contributions from donor nations.
The draft of the plan added that “implementing reconstruction requires arrangements for transitional governance and providing security in a way that preserves the prospects of a two-state solution.”
The Egyptian plan anticipates that the early recovery phase will last six months and require $3 billion, while the first reconstruction phase will last for two years and cost $20 billion.
The second reconstruction phase is expected to last two and a half years and cost $30 billion.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas also addressed the summit, saying that a working committee had been formed to prepare for taking up security “responsibilities after restructuring and unifying its cadres present in the Gaza Strip and training them in Egypt and Jordan.”
The Jordan Times observed that while several Arab heads of state participated in Tuesday’s summit, de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) was “notably absent, sending his top diplomat instead.”
