CAIRO — Egypt is formulating plans for a regional solution to the aftermath of the devastating war in Gaza that counter President Donald Trump's idea of permanently displacing Palestinians from the territory to neighboring Arab states.
Egypt, which borders both Gaza and Israel, views any mass displacement of Palestinians into its territory as a red line.
Leaders from Arab League states are meeting in Cairo on Tuesday to jointly reject calls for displacement and to discuss counter-proposals spearheaded by Egypt in close coordination with powerhouse Saudi Arabia and others in the region.
The meeting, however, comes as the ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas is at risk of unraveling, threatening Egypt's plans for the reconstruction of Gaza after the war.
Israel is currently blocking all humanitarian aid and goods from entering Gaza as its far-right government seeks to pressure Hamas into a new ceasefire deal to release more Israeli hostages, but without committing to permanently ending the war as Hamas is demanding.
As Egyptian mediators work to maintain the ceasefire, Egypt will be simultaneously hosting Arab leaders at the summit to secure region-wide support for its vision for Gaza's future.
"We are builders. Egyptians are builders from the pyramids until now," says Abdel-Moneim Said Aly, head of the advisory board of the Regional Center for Security Studies in Cairo.
"We need to have a plan of our own, not waiting for Mr. Trump to do it," he says.
NPR has spoken with diplomats, intelligence officials and policy advisers in Egypt involved in these plans. NPR has also obtained a copy of one of the plans under review for a sustainable recovery in Gaza. These plans are rooted around Palestinians remaining on the land and lay the ground for what could be a lasting peace.
Egypt's role in drafting a regional response to the U.S. and Israel
The plans drafted by Egypt are an attempt at tackling Gaza's moonscape of rubble and debris, the result of some 16 months of war and sustained Israeli airstrikes. At least 48,000 Palestinians were killed and more than 110,000 wounded by Israeli fire in the war, according to Gaza's health ministry. The war was sparked when an attack by Hamas-led militants on Israel killed around 1,200 people. Another 250 were taken hostage from Israel.
The United Nations says more than 90% of homes have been damaged or destroyed, overwhelmingly by Israeli airstrikes, along with most hospitals, schools and basic infrastructure like water, sewage and electricity networks.
Diplomats and security officials in Egypt tell NPR that Arab League states will be presented with a time-bound, multi-phased plan that includes bringing into Gaza thousands of mobile homes for Palestinians to live in while reconstruction of roads, housing and basic infrastructure is taking place.
Egypt also has ideas around what kinds of companies would be involved in the reconstruction, how to utilize solar panels for electricity and how to repurpose the huge amounts of rubble after it's cleared of unexploded ordnance and thousands of bodies Gaza's health ministry says are trapped under the debris.
Parallel Egyptian plans are being conceived to address political reforms, which will be key to securing international donor support for Gaza's reconstruction, including from countries like Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. that are opposed to Hamas.
The creation of a temporary Palestinian administration of 15 to 20 people is being discussed, including with Israel. It would exclude figures from Hamas and the deeply unpopular Palestinian Authority, which currently runs areas of the occupied West Bank. It would be made up of technocrats unaffiliated to any Palestinian faction, according to the Egyptian plans shared with NPR.
The idea is this would eventually pave a path for a transformed Palestinian Authority to return to govern Gaza and exercise sovereignty over it and the West Bank. Gaza's police force, which saw 1,400 officers killed in mostly targeted Israeli airstrikes in the war, would be revamped and given security training.
One of the plans seen by NPR also looks into questions around what kind of body would oversee the tens of billions of dollars needed to rebuild Gaza after the war and what kinds of levers of accountability will be in place to address donor concerns over corruption.
This plan also lays out various scenarios and looks at what role international bodies like the U.N. could play, as well as countries like the United States and those in the BRICS alliance, like Russia and China.
It lays out a range of costs for rebuilding Gaza, estimating an overall reconstruction price tag between $50 billion and $80 billion, dependent on whether hostilities fully cease or not.
The plan draws from Europe's U.S.-led recovery after World War II, and more recent examples, like Bosnia.
Ayman Ismail, a Harvard-educated real estate developer in Egypt and strategist involved in conceiving Cairo's New Administrative Capital, tells NPR the solutions being formulated have a chance to succeed.
"The world has managed to solve problems similar like that," Ismail said. "I mean the U.S. itself led the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, so we could actually do the same."
Egyptian experts whom NPR spoke with say the primary focus in Egypt's reconstruction plans is the immediate humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but these also need to be linked to a wider peace process.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who will be attending the March 4 Arab League summit in Cairo, says the most urgent task now is maintaining the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel and ensuring aid reaches people in Gaza.
He says there must be a clear political framework for Gaza that addresses Israel's legitimate security concerns and ensures no reductions in Gaza's territory or the forced transfer of its population.
"Palestinians deserve lasting stability and a just and principled peace. And the people of Israel deserve to live in peace and security," Guterres said.
Aly, of the Regional Center for Security Studies in Cairo, has been reaching out to Egyptian thinkers, architects and business leaders to solicit ideas for a way out of the current crisis.
He says any solutions today require a comprehensive and lasting peace between Arabs and Israel, which can only happen when Palestinians have a state.
"Everything is destroyed and everybody is pessimistic, but that is the point in which certain people, thinkers, start to talk that it is possible," Said says about peace.
Trump's plans lack regional support
Trump has floated his ideas for Mideast peace repeatedly since taking office. His plan centers on permanently displacing Gaza's roughly 2 million Palestinians into countries like Egypt and Jordan before taking over the strip of land and turning it into a seaside real estate project. Trump, an ardent supporter of Israel, calls the war-ridden landscape of Gaza, uninhabitable. He has described Gaza as a "hell hole" and "demolition site," and says Palestinians will have better lives elsewhere.
He recently posted an apparently AI-generated video to his social media accounts, showing Gaza as a playground for the rich, dotted with golden statues of himself, as he lounges on its shores with Israel's prime minister. The creator of the video was not identified, but it drew strong criticism from Palestinians in Gaza, as well as Arab and Muslim Americans appalled that Trump shared it.
Egypt's former foreign minister and former ambassador to the United States, Nabil Fahmy, says Egypt will not participate in a policy that expels Palestinians and erases their aspirations for an independent state.
"You cannot by use of force simply erase the Palestinians. We won't accept that because then you're applying that standard throughout," he says. "We will not participate in that."
Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has stated since the beginning of the war in October 2023 that the expulsion of Palestinians, whether voluntary or forced, would threaten regional security because it risks drawing Egypt and Israel into direct conflict. This would unravel the peace treaty between the two countries and upend what's been the lynchpin of U.S. foreign policy in the region for the past 45 years.
Ahmed Abuhamda contributed reporting from Cairo.
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