The long-awaited summit of the League of Arab States was finally held in Cairo last Tuesday a month after Trump’s declarations that Gaza would become a “Riviera of the Middle East” — “owned” by the U.S. and ethnically cleansed of its people.
The summit came following the rejection of the U.S. plan by several Arab countries, including Jordan and Egypt which Trump had identified as permanent destinations for Gaza’s people. In the lead-up to the summit Egypt announced a plan in mid-February to rebuild Gaza without displacing its population as an alternative to Trump’s plan. This plan was adopted, as expected, by the Arab summit last Tuesday.
The plan previews the reconstruction of Gaza in four years, with modern housing, infrastructure, and a transportation network. Implementing it would cost 53 billion dollars.
The plan also includes a vision for the political administration of Gaza after the war, reaffirming the connection between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and placing it within the framework of a two-state solution. The plan envisions the establishment of an independent commission to run Gaza during the reconstruction phase as a transitional period meant to reunite Gaza and the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority (PA). The plan is no longer just an Egyptian one and is now the unified Arab proposal for Gaza’s future — meant as a direct counter to Trump’s dystopian vision.
The Israeli government rejected the plan outright, saying in a statement that the Arab Summit did not take into account what it called “new facts” after October 7, 2023. Israel also objected that the Arab plan did not mention or condemn the October 7 attacks and continued to rely on the Palestinian Authority and the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the reconstruction phase. While the White House also rejected the plan, both the PA and Hamas accepted it. Differences remain between them over the fate of Hamas’s arms and the continued existence of the Qassam Brigades as an armed guerrilla group in Gaza under PA administration.
It is now up to the Arab states to convince the Trump administration of their plan and that their vision is more realistic than the wholesale expulsion of the population of Gaza. This presents an [interesting challenge](https://mondoweiss.net/2025/03/slight-rift-between-trump-and-netanyahu-leaves-opening-for-arab-states-to-avoid-ethnic-cleansing-in-gaza/) for Trump’s economic ambitions in the Middle East. At stake are the prospects of Arab normalization with Israel and the planned mega-investments in the region involving natural resources — including Gaza’s natural gas reserves — and Israel’s economic integration with the Gulf states to counter China’s economic expansion.
Thirty-four years after Israelis and Palestinians sat for the first time at the negotiating table at the Madrid conference in 1991, and after both sides began direct bi-lateral negotiations in Washington, the future of the Palestinian cause seems to now depend on the capacity of Arab states to reach an understanding with the U.S.
Although this situation represents a historical precedent in which Arab states have adopted a unified position on Palestine and spoken to the U.S. administration in one voice, it is also a setback for the Palestinian cause and a direct result of failing Palestine on the part of Arab states.
The last time Arabs had a unified position over Palestine was when the Arab League recognized the PLO as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people at the Rabat summit in 1974. It was an important step in placing the Palestinian cause in the hands of Palestinians and dissociating Arab states from the main responsibility for solving the Palestinian question. The Arab decision in 1974 was itself in opposition to its previously declared decision at the 1968 Khartoum summit that rejected negotiations with Israel given its occupation of Arab lands in the Syrian Golan heights, Egypt’s Sinai desert, and the West Bank and Gaza.
The Arab recognition of the PLO’s representation of Palestinians in 1974 came after the October 1973 war, which Egypt and Syria considered as their retribution against Israel after U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger began to lay the groundwork for a political process between Israel and the Arab states. In other words, the 1974 recognition of the PLO was a way of freeing Arab states of responsibility for Palestine.
The same year, the PLO adopted a new political program, called the “Ten-Point Program,” which accepted negotiations as a way to establish a Palestinian state. When the more radical opposition to Arafat’s leadership within the PLO, represented by several leftist factions, criticized Arafat for compromising on full liberation, he and his camp defended their position by saying that they were exercising the “independence of Palestinian decision-making.”
> After fifty years, the future of the Palestinian cause is back in the hands of the Arab states and the U.S. — a far cry away from the “independence of Palestinian decision-making,” first touted by Arafat and actualized by Hamas.
Since 1967, Arab states have tried in all ways to rid themselves of direct responsibility for solving the Palestine question, while Palestinians have been trying to take their cause into their own hands. In a certain sense, this is one of the most palpable achievements of the Palestinian struggle over the past several decades.
But half a century later, the path to negotiations is blocked, the two-state solution is dead, and the PLO itself has lost much of its relevance. Its current leadership continues to rely on its past history of political struggle to maintain legitimacy, with no real power or leverage on the ground and completely forgoing any form of resistance or antagonism toward the occupation. Meanwhile, another Palestinian force — Hamas — has gone in the opposite direction, taking the strategy of armed struggle to its furthest limits. It is now being forced to negotiate for its own political future.
Most paradoxically, after fifty years, the future of the Palestinian cause is back in the hands of the Arab states and the U.S. — a far cry away from the “independence of Palestinian decision-making,” first touted by Arafat and actualized by Hamas.
The Arab states are assuming responsibility for the Palestine question now not only because their plans for the future of the region’s economy are at stake — which before October 7 were already proceeding apace while completely failing to take the Palestinian people into account — but because the stability of the Arab states themselves is on the line.
The alternative to rebuilding Gaza the Arab way is total ethnic cleansing, first in Gaza and most likely continuing on to the West Bank. The most vocal face of the Israeli right wing today, Israel’s Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, calls this vision a “definitive end of the conflict.” What both Israel and the Trump administration don’t understand is that a mass expulsion of Palestinians wouldn’t end the “conflict,” but rather would give it a fresh start.
After the Nakba of 1948, and after the mass expulsion of over 200,000 Palestinians in 1967, entire Arab regimes fell and new governments rose in their place. The Palestinian refugee presence in these countries transformed, against all odds, into a militant formation that enjoyed the overwhelming sympathy of the societies in which they were embedded. Often it has threatened the legitimacy of the Arab host countries and their conciliatory stance toward Israel. Arab states that have lived through these experiences know this.
The Palestinian political leadership itself is incapable of reaching a unified political program or rebuilding the Palestinian national movement on a democratic basis. A mass expulsion of Palestinians would be the cataclysm that opens a new era, and nobody can guarantee what kind of Palestinian leadership will emerge from it. The only alternative is to restore the stability of the current Palestinian political system and give it the chance to repair. That can only happen by reuniting Gaza and the West Bank under the PLO, and that is why the Arab states have thrown their backing behind this proposal.
> As the official Arab political system comes to the table again to discuss terms with the U.S., the entire geopolitical reality in the Middle East is being redrawn.
As for Hamas, it has already [agreed to relinquish control over Gaza’s administration](https://mondoweiss.net/2025/02/exclusive-senior-hamas-leader-says-movement-isnt-interested-in-ruling-gaza-but-laying-down-arms-remains-a-red-line/) and become part of the PLO, accepting the PLO platform adopting a Palestinian state within the framework of a two-state solution. The compromise that would have to be made by the Palestinian Authority to make this happen would be to allow free elections and let all political currents in Palestinian society — many of which emerged after the split between Fatah and Hamas in 2007 and never had a chance to play a role in Palestinian politics — to have a say.
The genocide in Gaza has been a cataclysmic event after which there’s no going back. Things will never be how they were before. Internal Palestinian political divisions are unprepared for coping with the consequences, and the Israeli political scene is too consumed by an unprecedented wave of racist fanaticism to produce a pragmatic leadership that could produce a realistic vision for the future. As the official Arab political system, represented by the conjunction of Arab states, comes to the table again to discuss terms with the U.S., the entire geopolitical reality in the Middle East is being redrawn.
But one thing remains constant: the Palestinian people aren’t free, and they haven’t given up on being free. The rest will be reorganized around this fact.