Afrasianet - Hassan Nafaa - When Israel responded to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by waging a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, the official Arab regime did nothing, despite the unprecedented losses inflicted on the Palestinian people.
Last Tuesday, an extraordinary Arab summit called the "Palestine Summit" was held in Cairo, with the main and only objective of discussing "a plan to rebuild Gaza without displacing its population", initiated by Egypt, in response to a US plan aimed at "seizing the Gaza Strip and displacing its inhabitants", which Donald Trump announced at a press conference held at the White House, during a visit by Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States of America several weeks ago.
Because the Egyptian plan had already been proposed, discussed, and approved at a "mini-consultative summit" held in Riyadh on Feb. 21, and in which participation was limited to Gulf Cooperation Council member states, Egypt, and Jordan, it was expected that it would be easily approved by the expanded Arab summit, to which we referred earlier. But does this mean that the Arab world now has a plan B that can be implemented on the ground, or that the US-Israeli plan, which aimed at displacing Palestinians and possibly annexing the West Bank and placing it under Israeli sovereignty at the same time, has failed and has already been turned down?
The practices of the Arab official system over the past fifteen months do not allow such a hasty conclusion to be drawn.
When Israel responded to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by launching a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, in parallel with the escalation of military operations against Palestinian camps in the West Bank, the official Arab regime did not lift a finger, despite the unprecedented human and material losses suffered by the Palestinian people there.
In the Gaza Strip, the destruction was too great to describe, involving homes, schools, universities, hospitals, mosques and churches. The casualties amounted to nearly a quarter of a million people killed, wounded and missing, most of them women and children, a huge number, almost equivalent to about 10% of the total population of the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, a significant number of residential neighborhoods were destroyed in the vast majority of refugee camps, some amounting to nearly 90% of the total housing, many streets were bulldozed, infrastructure was removed, and several thousand residents were displaced.
Throughout this period, the official Arab regime has been content to issue statements of condemnation that do not fatten or sing from hunger. He did not take a single practical measure to express his anger and protest against Israel's violations, such as asking Arab countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel to sever these relations and withdraw their ambassadors from Tel Aviv.
He did not take the initiative to prosecute Israel in international courts, leaving South Africa struggling alone on this front without being able to provide any kind of support or assistance to it, and he did not even dare to exert any kind of pressure to prevent Israel from using starvation as a weapon to bring the Palestinian people to their knees, and to get it to allow the entry of humanitarian aid, whose convoys were piling up before his eyes at the Rafah crossing. It is true that Egypt and Qatar played a useful role, succeeding in employing Their special relationship with the United States to reach a three-stage ceasefire agreement, but the inability of the Arab regime re-manifested itself when Israel violated this agreement and refrained from entering into negotiations to implement the second phase.
However, fairness requires us to admit that Egypt and Jordan played a pivotal role in the current round, when they immediately realized that the genocidal war waged by Israel on the Gaza Strip aims to evacuate it from its inhabitants and push Palestinians to forcibly displace them to Sinai, and that the military escalation in the West Bank aims to push the largest possible number of its residents towards forced refuge in Jordan, and immediately declared their categorical rejection of these Israeli plans. The Arab official did not sense the danger and began to move to confront the displacement plans, until Trump officially adopted them, and announced his project to seize Gaza and turn it into a "global riviera", and his support for Israeli plans to annex the West Bank, which explains Saudi Arabia's initiative to quickly call for a consultative summit in Riyadh, and Egypt's initiative to quickly call for an expanded extraordinary summit in Cairo. It should be noted here that the "Trump plan for reconstruction and displacement" had two dimensions, one technical, the other political.
In its technical dimension, Trump based his plan on the assumptions that the Gaza Strip was completely destroyed, then became an unviable place, and that its reconstruction will take a long period, ranging from 8-15 years, during which it will be difficult to leave the population homeless and without services, especially since its area is small and crowded with a population that has suffered greatly from uninterrupted wars. Hence, the difficulty of rebuilding it without relocating its residents and settling them in spacious places that allow them to live in calm and safety.
Because Egypt decided to confront itself to refute this technical dimension, it had to respond with a detailed and integrated architectural plan, through which it confirms the invalidity of the assumptions on which Trump built his plan, and proves with practical evidence that the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip is possible without the displacement of its population, which it has already done by preparing an integrated plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip without the need to displace its residents, within a period not exceeding five years, which it has already done.
As for its political dimension, it was quite clear that Trump decided to adopt the plan of the extreme Israeli right, rejecting the two-state solution, seeking to annex the West Bank and reoccupy the Gaza Strip.
The evidence is his demand for Egypt and Jordan to allocate places to shelter the deported Palestinians, and his clear indication that these deportees will not be allowed to return to their homeland after the reconstruction process is completed. Because this dimension is the most important and the real goal behind the plan announced by Trump in consultation with Netanyahu, it necessitated a collective Arab response, which not only rejects the US-Israeli plan for displacement and annexation, but also proposes an alternative Arab vision on how to create regional and international conditions for the reconstruction of Gaza in a way that leads to lasting peace in the region. The task that the final communiqué of the Cairo summit tried to do.
The final communiqué of the extraordinary summit, held in Cairo last Tuesday, included 23 paragraphs that allow to draw a unified Arab vision on how to achieve peace and stability in the region, the most important elements of which can be summarized as follows:
1- Totally rejecting the displacement of Palestinians from any part of their homeland, or annexing any part of their lands, stressing that this will not help the stability of the region, but rather to pour more oil on the fires burning in it.
2- Full implementation of the second and third phases of the ceasefire agreement signed between Israel and Hamas, and demanding an immediate cessation of Israel's escalation in the West Bank.
3- Full support for the international conference to be hosted by Cairo to discuss ways of recovery and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.
4- Approving the formation of a committee of technical competencies to manage the Gaza Strip under the umbrella of the Palestinian government during a transitional period, for a period of six months, and stressing that security is a pure Palestinian responsibility.
5- Calling on the Security Council to deploy international peacekeeping forces in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in the context of "strengthening the political horizon for the embodiment of the Palestinian state.
6. Welcome efforts to reform the Palestinian Authority.
7- Full support for the efforts exerted for the two-state solution, and active participation in the international conference to settle the Palestinian issue and implement the two-state solution chaired by Saudi Arabia and France, scheduled to be held next June.
However, turning this vision into an actionable plan of action on the ground requires more than condemnation, condemnation, welcome, warning, and other vocabulary that no longer works with an enemy that knows only the language of force.
Without diminishing the importance of a unified Arab position rejecting U.S.-backed Israeli plans aimed at displacing the Palestinian population and annexing their lands, the official Arab system should answer the following questions: What if Israel and the United States insist on implementing plans that it rejects and that threaten its existence? Does it continue to follow the same approach, or does it have other alternatives that can help it achieve its goals in a better way.
I don't want to rush to the conclusion that the Cairo summit fell short of ambition, and the Arab official order, in any case, will face a severe test over the next few days.
If Witcov, Trump's Middle East envoy, who is expected to arrive in the region this weekend, fails to get Israel to enter negotiations to implement the second phase of an agreement that the United States is one of the signatories and guarantors of its implementation, especially if Netanyahu is allowed to resume fighting, the official Arab system will have to come to the conclusion, by itself and for itself, that the contemporary world no longer respects only the powerful and is no longer strong enough for others to treat it with due respect.