(Palestinians in Gaza do not want to live under Israeli occupation. Hell, the Palestinians in the West Bank, the ones who aren't corrupt traitors, they don't want to live under Israeli occupation either. I told you TrumpyBear was planning to do this.)
from the Times of Israel
One of the main proposals for rebuilding the Gaza Strip that US President Donald Trump’s administration has presented to potential Gulf donor countries envisions the construction of roughly half a dozen residential regions on the eastern half of the Strip, which is currently under Israeli control, two Arab diplomats familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel.
The diplomats said that “new Gaza” is the term frequently used by US officials to describe the project that will take place on the eastern side of the Yellow Line — the newly created boundary to which the IDF withdrew on October 10 at the start of the Gaza ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
The partial withdrawal left Israel in control of roughly 53 percent of Gaza, but Trump’s plan for ending the war envisions the IDF gradually withdrawing to the other side of the Gaza border and leaving the Strip altogether.
However, that withdrawal is linked to the success of a still-to-be-established International Stabilization Force (ISF) tasked with securing postwar Gaza, along with the disarmament of the Hamas terror group, which has shown no interest in giving up its weapons.
With those two conditions for continued Israeli withdrawal so difficult to meet, the US is not waiting to begin the reconstruction process, and Trump’s top adviser Jared Kushner has indicated that Washington wants to start with the Israeli side of the Yellow Line and with the southern city of Rafah in particular.
The US proposal envisions as many as one million Palestinians — around half of Gaza’s population — moving to the residential areas on the Israel-held side of the Yellow Line. These areas will be built within two years, even if IDF forces don’t withdraw by then, said the two diplomats briefed on the plan, adding that they found the benchmark highly unrealistic.
“Palestinians may not want to live under the rule of Hamas, but the idea that they’ll be willing to move to live under Israeli occupation and be under control of the party they also see as responsible for killing 70,000 of their brethren is fantastical,” one of the Arab diplomats said, apparently rounding up the death toll from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.
While the White House did not respond to requests for comment, a US official rejected the notion that the Trump administration has decided on any particular plan for the postwar management of Gaza, insisting that the effort is still in its early stages and that lots of ideas are being discussed.
One of those ideas, which was crafted at the Kiryat Gat-based, US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), envisioned the creation of a “humanitarian belt” along the Yellow Line in which roughly 16 distribution hubs would be established, similar to those run by the now-dormant Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to two sources familiar with the matter
But the plan faced pushback from humanitarian agencies and international organizations working out of the CMCC and accordingly did not get off the ground, the two sources said.
Meanwhile, the US wants the ISF to deploy in the near future on the other side of the Yellow Line — the area that is currently under de facto Hamas control — the diplomats said, noting that the idea has faced pushback from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which Washington hopes will be among the lead bankrollers of the project.
While Trump claims that countries are itching to join the effort to disarm Hamas, both Arab diplomats insisted that that is far from the case.
Countries like Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Egypt may have offered to contribute troops to the ISF, but not without a clear UN mandate or some sort of agreement with Hamas through which the terror group decommissions at least some of its weapons, the two Arab diplomats said.
The second Arab diplomat said that the US would have an easier time convincing countries to join the ISF if troops were deployed first on the eastern side of the Yellow Line, in place of the IDF, in parallel with a negotiated agreement for Hamas to disarm.
Both diplomats said it was unclear whether Kushner and the other US officials in charge of the Gaza file are listening to the pushback that they’ve been receiving from some of their Gulf allies.
The second diplomat added that Arab countries are also trying to straddle a fine line, as they try to push back on key elements of the US plan for postwar Gaza without upsetting Trump, whose support they want to maintain on a variety of issues.
The diplomat added that the US officials briefing them on Washington’s Gaza rebuilding efforts had said Washington is hoping to put forward a UN Security Council resolution to establish the ISF later this month, possibly before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s November 18 visit to the White House, which has been circled as a key date for the Gaza rebuilding effort.
Drafts of the US-sponsored resolution have already started cycling among the UN missions of various stakeholder countries in New York, one of the Arab diplomats said.
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