The Arab plan for Gaza sidelines Hamas and PA, but only for six months
Dead-on-arrival plan for non-factional interim committee to run Gaza during transition is dissociated from reality
Hussain Abdul-Hussain
The Arab peace plan for Gaza sidelines the strip’s rulers, Hamas, as well as the internationally recognized, inept and corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA), but only for six months, “in preparation for enabling the PA to fully return to the Gaza Strip.” In the interim, a “Gaza Administration Committee is being formed” and will be “composed of technocrats and non-factional figures … to manage the affairs” of the strip during the “transitional phase.”
The office of Egyptian president Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi put out the plan, in 91 pages, divided into “the political context” and “technical details,” as Sisi welcomed Arab leaders in Cairo for the Arab League’s “emergency summit,” held on Tuesday.
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Even though buried in the middle of the text, the non-factional interim committee to run Gaza for a six-month transitional period was the crux of the plan, so much so that Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat’s lead headline highlighted the “non-factional” nature of the committee.
But otherwise, the plan was dissociated from reality and short on details.
On the short-term, the plan called on the “international community to support the efforts of Egypt, Qatar and the US in consolidating the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, sustaining the current calm and releasing hostages and detainees.”
Cairo’s call for sustaining the ceasefire in Gaza requires moving to the “second phase,” which entails “a permanent end to the fighting in Gaza and reconstruction of the war-ravaged enclave,” while Hamas remains in power.
As the Wall Street Journal put it: “If Hamas remains in Gaza, Israel isn’t willing to end the war, and Gulf Arab states like the United Arab Emirates aren’t willing to fund its reconstruction.” The Arab plan is therefore dead.
And if the war ends and Hamas is allowed to stay in Gaza, it is most unlikely that the Palestinian militia will concede governance over the strip.
The Arab plan, which demands a two-state solution, has another problem. It defers disarming Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other militias until after the creation of a Palestinian state. Such a proposal is problematic in and by itself.
All two-state peace plans, since 1993, have been premised on the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and eventually the PA, monopolizing power and delivering on their security promises to Israel.
All of these plans have failed because while the PLO negotiated and won land concessions from Israel, it never reined in Hamas, which went on a suicide bombing campaign that tore through Israeli society and security throughout the 1990s, and after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000.
According to then-US Peace Envoy Dennis Ross, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the biggest Israeli supporter of the two-state solution, wanted the PLO and its leader Yasser Arafat to have an Altalena moment with Hamas. Altalena was a ship carrying arms to the Irgun militia in 1948. The newly formed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sank the ship when the Irgun refused to fold and join the young army, thus monopolizing the usage of power in the hands of the State of Israel.
Instead of controlling Hamas, Arafat used its violence to leverage his demands with Israel, according to an interview, last year, with his top aide Yasser Abd-Rabbu.
Israel tried another run with Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, but the incumbent PA president proved to be as unwilling or unable to monopolize power. October 7 was the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution, with Israel losing faith in entrusting its security to any Palestinian party.
The Arab plan, as presented by Cairo and endorsed by the Arab League at its summit, does not address any of the past hurdles to peace. It opens a window for an interim, non-partisan, Palestinian body to govern Gaza and, even then, does not instruct Hamas to disarm while promising the same old corrupt and incompetent Pato retake the strip.
Since its founding in 1945, the Arab League’s irrelevance has been the butt of jokes among the majority of the Arabs. The organization has behaved as a means for most Arab governments to wash their hands of problems (first and foremost the Palestinian issue), take a few photo ops and feel good about having a plan – while convincing themselves that the other side, mainly Israel, was too evil to grasp the extended Arab hand for peace.
Such was the case with the Beirut peace initiative of 2002, and such seems to be the case with the Arab Gaza plan. Experience has taught most Arabs that unless Arab governments act bilaterally in pursuit of their own national interests, collective Arab action is mere lip service.
So, in essence farcical.
The Arab summit was basically: “No change at all. We won't recognize Israel nor undo the Khartoum resolution. Instead we want to keep an Islamic/Arab beachhead in Israel so we can destroy it later when we are stronger.”