- Joined
- Mar 11, 2013
- Messages
- 13,870
- Points
- 113
Diplomats attend an Extraordinary Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Member States of The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Jeddah on March 7, 2025 (Amer HILABI / AFP)
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Friday adopted the Arab League’s counter-proposal to US President Donald Trump’s plan to take over Gaza and displace its residents, two ministers told AFP.
The decision by the 57-member grouping came at an emergency meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, three days after the Arab League ratified the plan at a summit in Cairo.
The Egyptian-crafted alternative to Trump’s widely condemned takeover proposes to rebuild the Gaza Strip under the future administration of the Palestinian Authority.
“The emergency ministerial meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation adopted the Egyptian plan, which has now become an Arab-Islamic plan,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said, in comments echoed by his Sudanese counterpart.
“It is certainly a very positive thing,” Abdelatty said.
OIC Secretary-General Hissein Brahim Taha had given his backing to the Arab plan at the opening of the talks in Jeddah.
Advertisement
At Tuesday’s summit in Cairo, Arab leaders also announced a trust fund to pay for Gaza’s reconstruction and urged the international community to back it.
The plan is a counter to Trump, who triggered global outrage by suggesting the US “take over” Gaza and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” while forcing its Palestinian inhabitants to relocate to Egypt, Jordan or other countries.
PalestinianPrime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammad Mustafa attends an Extraordinary Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Member States of The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Jeddah on March 7, 2025 (Amer HILABI / AFP)
Abdelatty had said his country, a mediator in the Hamas-Israel ceasefire talks, wanted OIC support to make it “both an Arab plan and an Islamic plan.”
“The meeting’s main goal is to endorse the Arab plan,” a Pakistani diplomat, who did not want to be named, told AFP. “It’s a crucial time and the Islamic world needs to appear united as much as we could against the American plan.”
The Arab plan envisions an independent committee of technocrats running Gaza for a six-month period before handing off control of the Strip to the Palestinian Authority. It provides for Palestinians to remain in the Strip while it is being rebuilt, as opposed to Trump’s proposal that the entire population be relocated.
It offers for international peacekeeping troops to be dispatched in Gaza through a UN Security Council resolution. In the meantime, Egypt and Jordan will train Palestinian Authority police officers so that they can then be dispatched to Gaza to uphold law and order, the plan says.
However, the Arab proposal does not address Hamas, instead maintaining that armed groups in Gaza can only be fully addressed through a political process that establishes a Palestinian state.
It was rejected by both the United States and Israel.
The plan “does not meet the expectations” of Washington, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters on Thursday.
A group of released hostages meets US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on March 5, 2025. (White House/X)
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff gave a more positive reaction, calling it a “good-faith first step from the Egyptians.”
Rabha Seif Allam, of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said “Egypt needs broad support” for its proposal. “This is an attempt to build a broad coalition that refuses the displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza, she said.
Trump’s plan has already united Arab countries in opposition, with Saudi Arabia also hosting Arab leaders two weeks ago to discuss alternatives.
The Jeddah meeting will “further signal the unity within the Islamic world,” said Umar Karim, an expert on Saudi foreign policy at the University of Birmingham.
“Bigger Muslim countries like Indonesia, Turkey and Iran will be there, and their endorsement will further [strengthen] the Arab plan,” he said.
The Arab League, in a statement endorsing the Egyptian plan, asserted that the security of Gaza “remains an exclusive responsibility of legitimate Palestinian institutions, in accordance with the principle of one law and one legitimate weapon” — meaning that the presence of armed groups other than the Palestinian Authority’s security forces would not be accepted.
While the Arab League adopted the plan, several leaders were notably absent at the Cairo summit, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed in what is being interpreted as a demonstration of their reticence toward the Egyptian proposal. The two countries, particularly the UAE, have been adamant in their opposition to any Hamas presence in Gaza.
But some analysts maintain that Egypt’s proposal is merely a starting point in negotiations with the US, and that Cairo could be prepared to move toward a harder line against Hamas if Israel is willing to accept the establishment of a Palestinian state.
This has been a non-starter for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but the Arab world is hoping to use its leverage to move Jerusalem, given that the US is not expected to get directly involved in Gaza’s reconstruction, leaving Israel bogged down in Gaza on its own if it doesn’t receive help from Arab allies.
Palestinians stand in line to purchase bread outside a bakery in Gaza City, February 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Bruce nodded at the Arab effort to address Gaza’s post-war governance, but said, “The Arab [plan] does not fulfill… the nature of what President Trump was asking for.”
Trump’s plan was “an invitation for new ideas, and it seemed to have spurred some new ideas” from the Arab world, said Bruce. However, she added, what Washington has seen to date from its allies has not been “adequate.”
The State Department spokeswoman did not specify what the White House thought was missing from Egypt’s plan, but said the US would not accept a framework that leads to a return of the cycle of violence in Gaza. She stressed Hamas could not continue to exist in the Strip.
Earlier Thursday, Witkoff reiterated that rebuilding Gaza would take 10 to 15 years, during which the Strip would be uninhabitable. Still, he avoided criticizing the Egyptian plan, that allows Palestinians to remain in Gaza while it is being rebuilt by dividing the enclave into seven zones and working on them separately.
“We’re evaluating everything there. It’s a little bit early to comment,” Witkoff said in response to a question regarding this aspect of the Egyptian plan. “We need more discussion about it, but it’s a good faith first step from the Egyptians.”
Like Bruce, Witkoff suggested the goal of Trump’s plan was merely to push regional allies to come up with alternatives.
“The larger point is that what President Trump is now talking about in Gaza is now encouraging other people in the Middle East to present proactive proposals for what we might consider,” said Witkoff.
According to a United Nations analysis from September, over two-thirds of Gaza’s structures have been damaged or destroyed amid the war in Gaza sparked on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
The Trump administration on Thursday sent mixed signals regarding its feelings about the Arab plan.
While Witkoff called the proposal a “good faith first step” with “a lot of compelling features to it,” hours later, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce characterized the proposal as “inadequate.”
US special envoy Steve Witkoff, center, accompanied by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaks with reporters at the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
Bruce’s comments at her first press briefing seemed more in line with the position voiced by White House National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes shortly after the plan was unveiled in Cairo, saying it didn’t account for “the reality that Gaza is currently uninhabitable.”
But Witkoff — not the State Department or White House National Security Council — is widely understood to be the most influential figure in the administration regarding matters pertaining to the Middle East and beyond, other than Trump himself, who has repeatedly expressed his faith in his envoy.
