Trump's leaked post-war Gaza plan puts further pressure on Egypt

The details of US President Donald Trump's plan for post-war Gaza constitute a formidable challenge to Egypt, political analysts in Cairo said.

This is particularly so with the plan, discussed during a late August White House meeting that brought together the US president, a host of his administration officials, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Trump senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, including the relocation of Gaza's entire population in return for financial incentives, they added.

"If implemented, the plan will have serious repercussions for Egypt's national security and its long-established policy towards the aspired Palestinian state," Egyptian political scientist Ahmed Youssef told The New Arab.

"The American president deals with issues that have a direct bearing on regional peace and security so lightly and in a way that raises many question marks," he added.

The details of President Trump's plan for post-war Gaza were revealed by The Washington Post on 31 August.

Like mentioned by Trump in February, the plan will build the war-shattered territory into a "Middle East Riviera", establishing US control over it and paying its residents to leave on the road to turning it into a trusteeship administered by the US for at least 10 years.

President Trump wants to make Gaza a "glitzy tourist resort" and a high-tech manufacturing and technology hub.

Gaza residents who own land would be offered a digital token in exchange for rights to redevelop their property.

The token can be used in financing their relocation to another country. They can also use it in getting a flat in one of six to eight new AI-based, smart cities to be built in Gaza, according to details of the plan.

Each Palestinian who chooses to leave would be given a $5,000 cash payment and subsidies to cover four years of rent elsewhere, as well as a year of food.

For most commentators, and the Palestinians themselves, this plan outlined by Trump formalises ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.

Uphill battle

Arab states are surely fretting about the plan, but one state remains to be most concerned: Egypt.

Egypt has rejected Trump's plan for the Palestinian enclave on numerous occasions since the US president unveiled it a month after swearing the oath of office in January this year.

This Egyptian rejection was first announced after Mr Trump suggested that Egypt and Jordan take in Gaza refugees.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi then said his country would not participate in a plan that would displace Gaza's population, describing such a plan as an "act of injustice".

Sisi also turned down an invitation to the White House extended him in early February by Mr Trump to discuss the day-after in Gaza.

In rejecting the plan, Egypt has national security and pan-Arab considerations it cannot compromise on, as clarified repeatedly by Sisi and senior Egyptian government officials.

Since Israel launched its war in October 2023, Sisi said the displacement of the Palestinians into Sinai, the Egyptian territory that abuts both Gaza and Israel, may imperil the 1979 treaty.

Relocated to Sinai, he said, the Palestinians would launch attacks against Israel, which would precipitate an Israeli response that would do away with peace with Egypt.

Egypt has also been pressing for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

"US takeover of Gaza will have very negative consequences for the prospect of resolving the Palestinian issue as a whole," Youssef said.

"This is a crime that has to be opposed in all forms because this takeover will leave no land for the establishment of the Palestinian state," he added.

Egypt, which has formulated a reconstruction plan for post-war Gaza and rallied Arab and Islamic nations behind this plan in March this year, has also started preparing for post-war governance in the territory by training thousands of Palestinian security personnel.

However, President Trump doubling down on his plan reverses all these Egyptian efforts and raises questions about what Cairo can do and whether it can do anything.

Egypt has not officially commented on the plan's details revealed recently yet. The New Arab attempted to contact the spokesman of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry for comment, but has not received a response at the time of publication.

Nevertheless, the head of the Committee on Defence and National Security in the Egyptian parliament outlined the uphill battle his country has ahead on the road to countering the American president's plan.

"Egypt has clarified before that it would not allow the displacement of the people of Gaza to happen," Gen. Ibrahim al-Masri told TNA.

"Egypt will keep moving ahead in rejecting the plan, regardless of the pressures it will face because of its position," he added.

No going back

Egypt has been bolstering security presence in North Sinai, along the border with Gaza, in the face of Israeli plans to displace the population of the coastal enclave.

The deployment of additional troops in Sinai is also Egypt's answer to Israel's decision to occupy Gaza City and drive close to 1 million people living in it into southern Gaza, near the Egyptian border.

The fear in Egypt is that by making Gaza uninhabitable and squeezing the population in a small space in its southern part will force hundreds of thousands of sacred and hungry Gaza residents to flee into Sinai, breaking the security barrier with Gaza and causing a difficult situation for Egyptian troops deployed on the other side of the border.

In early August, the Egyptian president, who described the war in Gaza as "systematic genocide", vowed that his country would not become a gateway for the displacement of the Palestinians.

Egypt's rejection of Gaza's depopulation and Trump's plan is also rooted in the plan's flagrant violation of international law.

The same plan offers deep insights into what specialists in Cairo call the emerging "Trump doctrine", a policy that intentionally sets facts of geography and history aside.

"The same doctrine also overlooks international law and the right to self-determination," international law specialist Ayman Salama said to TNA.

"The United Nations Charter and all international legitimacy resolutions give the Palestinians the right to determine their fate in full freedom," he added.

The same Trump doctrine, he noted, puts military force in the stead of international legitimacy as a governing factor in relations between nations, an alteration that opens the door for a new era of lawlessness, where the powerful tramples on the rights of the weak, presupposing that native peoples would easily give up their land.

Trump's plan clarifies, meanwhile, some of the developments of the present, pointing clearly to the reasons fuelling these developments, including the latest stormy Israeli cabinet meeting.

Lasting about six hours into the morning of September 1, the meeting brought together some Israeli cabinet ministers, along with army chief of staff Eyal Zamir, who, together with Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar and Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, lobbied for the hostage deal approved by the Gaza-ruling Hamas in early August, bowing to Egyptian and Qatari pressures.

Nevertheless, apart from suggesting that the hostage deal was not on the table, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that President Trump had asked him not to go for any partial deals and fight Hamas with full force until totally defeating it.

This demand by the US president, observers in Cairo said, puts Trump's post-war Gaza plan into context, showing his desire for the Israeli army to eliminate all possible hindrances to the implementation of the plan.

"As president of the US, Trump needs to be aware that the Palestinians have the legal right to establish their independent state in Gaza and the West Bank," said professor Salama.  "Gaza isn't just a geographic entity, but a basic component of the future Palestinian state."

He stressed that as an occupation force, Israel does not enjoy sovereignty of the land it occupies and is legally responsible for the safety of civilians in this land.

For his part, Gen. al-Masri expected Egypt's rejection of President Trump's plan and its possible actions against the plan, including by rallying Arab and Islamic nations against it, to raise the stakes in the showdown with Israel and the US.

Egypt has been growing critical of the Israeli war in Gaza, with the Egyptian foreign minister calling on 2 September at the Bled Strategic Forum in Slovenia for bringing Israel to account for killing dozens of Gaza civilians every day and using hunger as a weapon in the Palestinian territory.

"Relations with both Israel and the US have reached rock bottom already," Gen al-Masri said. "This is why the two countries are applying all forms of economic and political pressure for Egypt to backtrack, not knowing that Egypt will never go back."