AILSA CHANG, HOST:
President Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of transforming Gaza into a seaside resort by permanently relocating about 2 million Palestinians to neighboring countries like Egypt. That is unacceptable to many people in the Middle East, including to many people in Egypt. NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy has been reporting in Cairo and joins us now. Hey, Aya.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, so Trump says moving Palestinians out of Gaza will bring them a better life, it will lead to peace. What are you hearing from people in Egypt about that?
BATRAWY: Well, I know you said many people in Egypt, but I'll say basically no one in Egypt - not the public, not the presidency - agrees that - with Trump on his plan. This is viewed as extremely destabilizing to Egypt's national security. You know, Egypt borders Gaza, so any displacement of people across that border - voluntary or forced, OK? - would be seen as Egypt helping Israel remove Palestinians from their land. I spoke with Egypt's former foreign minister and a former ambassador to the U.S., Nabil Fahmy.
NABIL FAHMY: First issue is you cannot, by force of - by use of force, simply erase the Palestinian. We won't accept that because then you're applying that standard throughout. Secondly, we would be implicitly or explicitly participating in a premeditated process and policy to expel Palestinians and to erase their cause, and we'll not participate in that.
BATRAWY: And Ailsa, people here say that pushing Palestinians out of Gaza would also unravel Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. Now, that 45-year-old peace accord is the bedrock of U.S. foreign policy in the region.
CHANG: Yeah. OK, so then what can you tell us at this point about Egypt's efforts to push back on Trump's idea?
BATRAWY: So I spent the week here talking to people, and here's what I got. Egypt is formulating an Arab counterproposal, and we can look at this as happening in three tracks. The first one is reconstruction - how do you rebuild from the ashes? Almost all of Gaza's buildings are damaged or destroyed. You know, tens of thousands of people were killed. So first, you have to look at where Palestinians could live in Gaza as the territory's being rebuilt. How do you repurpose all of that rubble? What kind of companies are going to be involved?
The second track being examined here is something conceptual. It looks at the bigger picture of, for example, who's going to oversee the tens of billions of dollars needed to rebuild? What levers of accountability are going to be in place to address donor concerns over corruption, ensure transparency? What role would a transitional Palestinian Authority, without Hamas or the deeply unpopular Palestinian Authority, have? And what role is the U.S. and countries like China and Russia going to play?
Now, this plan draws from Europe's recovery after World War II and more recent examples like Bosnia. And I was leaked a copy of this plan and actually able to reach its author, Ayman Ismail. And he's a Harvard-educated real estate developer in Egypt and industrialist, a strategist, and he says Trump's plan cannot bring peace. So he's bringing forth solutions that actually have a chance to succeed.
AYMAN ISMAIL: All what I was trying to do is to sort of say, by the way, the world have managed to solve problems similar like that. I mean, U.S. itself led the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, so we could actually do the same.
CHANG: I mean, yeah, any rebuilding plan will need the backing of not only Trump, but also Israel and other Arab states, right? So how is Egypt addressing that?
BATRAWY: Exactly, Ailsa. The third track is arguably the hardest, and this is the political track. So I met with Egyptian intelligence officers who have spent decades mediating directly with Israel or between Palestinian factions in Israel, and they say the only solution is a comprehensive and lasting peace between Arabs and Israel that can only happen with a Palestinian state. Now, here, this is not just wishful thinking. Egypt is working closely with regional players like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Gulf States to formulate the outlines of a political roadmap and a framework for rebuilding Gaza. And that is going to be front and center when all the Arab League leaders meet here and converge in Cairo in five days to make clear that they reject Palestinian displacement and that they can come up with their own solutions.
CHANG: That is NPR's Aya Batrawy in Cairo, Egypt. Thank you so much, Aya.
BATRAWY: Thanks, Ailsa.
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