US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting Arab foreign ministers and a leading Palestinian official in Cairo today as he calls for a pause in the fighting in Gaza.
Washington wants an “immediate and sustained ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas, while the British government has demanded an “immediate pause in fighting“, followed by “progress towards a sustainable ceasefire”. But the international community has been less forthcoming with specific ideas for how to move forward.
As the violence continues, some have suggested creating a demilitarised zone, or even transforming Gaza into a rich, waterfront property empire.
What did the commentators say?
“Reaching a peaceful solution is easy if people would only make the decision to do it,” Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal told The New Statesman.
The former Saudi ambassador to the US called for a ceasefire that leads to a “prolonged truce of at least five years”, said the magazine. Then a Palestinian state would be created and recognised by the international community – including Israel. “Only then would negotiations start between Israel and Palestine, as two sovereign states, for the resolution of the conflict between them,” it added.
Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former foreign policy adviser Jared Kushner has suggested Israel should expel Gazan civilians and “clean up” the strip. Praising the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” during a discussion chaired by Tarek Masoud, Harvard’s Middle East Initiative faculty chair, Kushner said he “would just bulldoze something in the Negev” and “try to move people in there” while Gaza was transformed, The Independent reported.
Broadcaster Jon Stewart had his say too. He suggested that the Arab countries who “claim Palestine as their top priority” should “come in and form a demilitarized zone between Israel and a free Palestinian state”, said The Guardian. The Saudis, Egypt, UAE, Qatar and Jordan could “all form like a Nato arrangement guaranteeing security for both sides”, Stewart said. “Anything is better than the clusterf**k cycle we have now.”
But Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East Security programme at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank, told Business Insider that “every American administration going back decades has discussed some version” of Stewart’s suggestion.
Anna Jacobs, a senior Gulf analyst based in Qatar for the Belgium-headquartered International Crisis Group, added that Stewart’s idea would risk “angering Iran”, which is a “massive concern for the region”, said the news site.
“On the face of it,” wrote Stephen Daisley for The Spectator, “there is no obvious way forward.” But, he says, there is “a way to break this impasse”.
Recalling how the League of Nations created a mandate for the British administration of Palestine in the 1920s, he argued that the “basic concept is still sound”. Therefore, he added, “if the international community wants Israel to stop bombing Gaza”, the international community should “take over Gaza and stop Hamas attacking Israel”.
But he acknowledged that the prospect is unlikely because the international community “would find itself in Israel’s shoes”, learning “on the job” that “messy and ill-judged as Jerusalem’s military strategy sometimes is”, it is based on “bitter experience” of “the enemy”.
Nevertheless, he proposed, if the international community “disapproves of Israeli boots on the ground in Gaza”, it “should put its own boots there instead”.
There have also been more familiar suggestions. In November, the United Nations called for the international community to move towards a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with Jerusalem serving as the capital of both states.
But, said Reuters, the idea would hit a long-standing obstacle because Palestinians want East Jerusalem, “which includes the Old City’s sites sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike”, to be the capital of their state, while Israel insists that Jerusalem should remain its “indivisible and eternal” capital.
What next?
Blinken will meet foreign ministers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan today. Also present will be the Emirati international cooperation minister and the general secretary of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s executive committee, according to an Egyptian foreign ministry source, Reuters reported.
Although the subject of the meeting has not been officially disclosed, Egyptian security sources said that Arab nations would present plans for a political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Such long-term plans had been “put on hold”, said Al Jazeera, as mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the US have sought to secure a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza.