White House opposes Arab leaders’ Gaza reconstruction plan

WASHINGTON (AA) – The White House has expressed its opposition to a proposal at an Arab leaders’ summit for rebuilding Gaza, arguing that it does not address the current “reality” in the war-torn enclave.

“The current proposal does not address the reality that Gaza is currently uninhabitable and residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance,” National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in an emailed statement to Anadolu.

“President (Donald) Trump stands by his vision to rebuild Gaza free from Hamas. We look forward to further talks to bring peace and prosperity to the region,” he added.

An emergency Arab summit in Cairo on Tuesday adopted Egypt’s $53 billion reconstruction plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip without displacing Palestinians from their land.

The summit highlighted that it assigned an Arab legal committee to study the classification of Palestinian displacement as part of the crime of genocide.

It further called on the UN Security Council to deploy international peacekeeping forces in the West Bank and Gaza, with the goal of supporting the political horizon “for the embodiment of a Palestinian state.”

The Arab proposal came after Trump’s extraordinary plan to “take over” Gaza and resettle Palestinians to develop it into what he called the “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

His plan was rejected by the Arab world and many other nations, who say it amounts to ethnic cleansing.

Nearly 48,400 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and over 111,000 injured in a brutal Israeli war on Gaza since October 2023. The onslaught, which left the enclave in ruins, was paused under a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement that took hold on Jan. 19.

Israel halted the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza on Sunday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to start negotiations on the second phase of a ceasefire deal between Tel Aviv and Hamas.