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Arab States Adopt Egyptian Alternative to Trump’s ‘Gaza Riviera’
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meets with the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, during the emergency Arab summit organized by Egypt this week, in Cairo, Egypt, March 4, 2025. Photo: Palestinian President Office/Handout via REUTERS
Arab leaders adopted an Egyptian reconstruction plan for Gaza on Tuesday that would cost $53 billion and avoid displacing Palestinians from the enclave, in contrast to US President Donald Trump’s “Middle East Riviera” vision.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said the proposal, welcomed in subsequent statements by Hamas and criticized by Israel, had been accepted at the closing of a summit in Cairo.
Sisi said at the summit that he was certain Trump would be able to achieve peace in the conflict that has devastated the Gaza Strip.
The major questions that need to be answered about Gaza’s future are who will run the enclave and which countries will provide the billions of dollars needed for reconstruction.
Sisi said Egypt had worked in cooperation with Palestinians on creating an administrative committee of independent, professional Palestinian technocrats entrusted with the governance of Gaza after the end of the war.
The committee would be responsible for the oversight of humanitarian aid and managing the Strip’s affairs for a temporary period, in preparation for the return of the Palestinian Authority (PA), he said.
The other critical issue is the fate of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the PA’s rival, which triggered the Gaza war by attacking Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.
The Islamist faction that has run Gaza since 2007 said in a statement it agrees to the Egyptian committee proposal.
Hamas has agreed it will not field candidates to the Cairo-proposed committee, but it would have to give its consent to the tasks, members and the agenda of the committee that would work under the PA’s supervision.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said late on Tuesday the names for the individuals participating in the committee had been decided.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the PA, said he welcomed the Egyptian idea and urged Trump to support such a plan that would not involve displacing Palestinian residents.
Abbas, in power since 2005, also said he was ready to hold presidential and parliamentary elections if circumstances allowed, adding his PA was the only legitimate governing and military force in the Palestinian Territories.
Hamas said it welcomed the elections.
Abbas has seen his legitimacy steadily undermined by Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, which he oversees. Many Palestinians now regard his administration as corrupt, undemocratic, and out of touch.
The Israeli foreign ministry in a statement called the plan “rooted in outdated perspectives” and rejected the reliance on the PA while complaining that Hamas was left in power by the plan.
RECONSTRUCTION WOULD NEED GULF STATES
Any reconstruction funding would require heavy buy-in from oil-rich Gulf Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which have the billions of dollars needed.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa said the reconstruction fund would seek international financing as well as oversight and likely be located in the World Bank.
The UAE, which sees Hamas and other Islamists as an existential threat, wants an immediate and complete disarmament of the group, while other Arab countries advocate a gradual approach, a source close to the matter said.
A source close to Saudi Arabia’s royal court says the continued armed presence of Hamas in Gaza was a stumbling block because of strong objections from the United States and Israel, which would need to sign off on any plan.
In a speech at the summit, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said international guarantees were needed that the current temporary ceasefire would remain in place and supported the PA’s role in governing the strip.
Leaders of the UAE and Qatar did not speak during open sessions of the summit.
Hamas was founded in 1987 by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood during the first Palestinian Intifada, or uprising.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri on Tuesday rejected Israeli and US calls for the group to disarm, saying its right to resist was not negotiable.
Abu Zuhri told Reuters the group would not accept any attempt to impose projects, or any form of non-Palestinian administration or the presence of foreign forces.
Since Hamas drove the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza after a brief civil war in 2007, it has crushed all opposition there.
ALTERNATIVE TO TRUMP PLAN
Egypt, Jordan, and Gulf Arab states have for almost a month been consulting over an alternative to Trump’s ambition for an exodus of Palestinians and a US rebuild of Gaza, which they fear would destabilize the entire region.
A draft final communique from the summit seen earlier by Reuters rejected the mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.
Egypt’s Reconstruction Plan for Gaza is a 112-page document that includes maps of how its land would be re-developed and dozens of colorful AI-generated images of housing developments, gardens and community centers. The plan includes a commercial harbor, a technology hub, beach hotels, and an airport.
Israel was unlikely to oppose an Arab entity taking responsibility for Gaza’s government if Hamas was off the scene, said a source familiar with the matter.
But an Israeli official told Reuters that Israel‘s war aims from the beginning have been to destroy Hamas’s military and governing capabilities.
“Therefore, if they are going to get Hamas to agree to demilitarize, it needs to be immediately. Nothing else will be acceptable,” the official said.
Sources familiar with Hamas said the group had only lost a few thousand fighters in the Gaza war.
Israeli officials say around 20,000 Hamas fighters have been killed and the group has been destroyed as an organized military formation.
The White House National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the outcome of the Arab summit.
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US Imposes New Sanctions on Houthis After Redesignating Iran-Backed Rebels in Yemen as Terror Group
A Houthi fighter mans a machine gun mounted on a truck during a parade for people who attended Houthi military training as part of a mobilization campaign, in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
The United States has imposed sanctions on seven senior members of the Houthis, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday, one day after the Trump administration officially redesignated the Iran-backed rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).
The newly sanctioned individuals smuggled military-grade items and weapon systems into Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and negotiated buying weapons from Russia, according to the Treasury Department. Abdulwali Abdoh Hasan Al-Jabri and his company, Al-Jabri General Trading and Investment Co, were also designated for recruiting Yemenis to fight in Ukraine on behalf of Russia and raised money to support Houthi military operations.
“The US government is committed to holding the Houthis accountable for acquiring weapons and weapons components from suppliers in Russia, China, and Iran to threaten Red Sea security,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The latest sanctions came after the US State Department on Tuesday officially redesignated the Yemeni rebels as an FTO, following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump shortly after he took office.
Trump’s executive order in late January followed repeated attacks by the Houthis, also known as Ansarallah, against Israel since October 2023, including the launch of over 200 missiles and 170 attack drones.
“The Houthis’ activities threaten the security of American civilians and personnel in the Middle East, the safety of our closest regional partners, and the stability of global maritime trade,” the executive order reads.
The United States formally designates Ansarallah, commonly referred to as the Houthis, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization pic.twitter.com/jsmNw6k1ew
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 4, 2025
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Washington’s redesignation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization in a post on X, urging for the eradication of terrorism.
“The Houthis, an Iranian proxy, unprovokedly launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks at Israeli citizens and communities, disrupted international shipping routes and upended global stability,” Sa’ar wrote.
I commend the decision by @POTUS and @SecRubio to designate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The Houthis, an Iranian proxy, unprovokedly launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks at Israeli citizens and communities, disrupted international shipping routes… pic.twitter.com/Oxrs8FwqoT— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) March 4, 2025
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced the department’s official designation, which restores sanctions that legally prevent American individuals and organizations from providing “material support” to the Yemeni terrorist group.
Trump’s order also calls for the destruction of the Houthis’ military capabilities and for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to inspect all partners and programs in Yemen to ensure funds do not reach the terrorist group.
Additionally, the US announced a reward offer of up to $15 million and possible re-location for information leading to the disruption of the Yemeni group’s financial mechanisms.
“Since 2023, the Houthis have launched hundreds of attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, as well as US service members defending freedom of navigation and our regional partners,” Rubio said in a statement. “Most recently, the Houthis spared Chinese-flagged ships while targeting American and allied vessels.”
The FTO designation makes non-citizen members and representatives of the Houthis eligible for deportation and requires any US financial institution with ties to the group to report to the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the US Treasury Department.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, the Houthis — whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — have targeted over 100 merchant vessels in the Red Sea. They asserted that these attacks and disruption of global trade were a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza following Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In January, the group signaled it would limit its attacks in the Red Sea corridor to only Israeli-affiliated ships after a ceasefire began in the Gaza Strip but warned that broader assaults could resume if necessary. Reports have indicated that the Houthis used Iranian-supplied ballistic and cruise missiles to carry out these attacks.
In 2021, the Biden administration reversed Trump’s previous decision to designate the Houthis as an FTO, citing a desire to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Yemen.
In his statement, Rubio stated that this concern over humanitarian aid is no longer an issue, saying that the US would no longer “tolerate any country engaging with terrorist organizations like the Houthis in the name of practicing legitimate international business.”
Several countries — including Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Israel — currently designate the Houthis as terrorists.
Last month, the United Nations announced it suspended its humanitarian operations in areas controlled by Houthi rebels, after they detained dozens of UN staffers, who remain unreleased.
The Houthis have been waging an insurgency in Yemen for two decades in a bid to overthrow the Yemeni government. They have controlled a significant portion of the country’s land in the north and along the Red Sea since 2014, when they captured it in the midst of a civil war.
The post US Imposes New Sanctions on Houthis After Redesignating Iran-Backed Rebels in Yemen as Terror Group first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Barnard College President Blasts Anti-Zionist Columbia Group as Trump Sets Campus Antisemitism in Crosshairs
Pro-Hamas protesters at Columbia University on April 19, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender via Reuters Connect
Barnard College president Laura Rosenbury has issued a scorching rebuke of the anti-Zionist campus group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), accusing it of causing $30,000 in damages during a recent protest and betraying “the goals and sanctity of higher education.”
Rosenbury — whose June 2023 ascension to Barnard’s presidency took place just months before anti-Israel activists upended higher education by staging mass, unauthorized demonstrations and other disruptive activities to express support for Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel — issued the censorious statements in an op-ed published on Monday by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
“They [CUAD] operate in the shadows, hiding behind masks and Instagram posts with Molotov cocktails aimed at Barnard buildings, antisemitic tropes about wealth, influence, and ‘Zionist billionaires,’ and calls for violence and disruption at any cost,” Rosenbury wrote, citing CUAD’s involvement in a January incident in which several of its members disrupted Columbia professor Avi Shilon’s course on modern Israeli history to spew pro-Hamas propaganda. “They claim Columbia University’s name, but the truth is, because their members wear masks, no one really knows whose interests they serve. Columbia has disavowed the group.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUAD stormed and occupied the Milbank Hall administrative building at Barnard College last week to protest the expulsion of two students who participated in disrupting Shilon’s course. During the demonstration, a staff member was assaulted so severely as to require hospitalization, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
In Monday’s op-ed, Rosenbury enumerated a slew of other offenses the group allegedly committed.
“They broke into our Access Barnard offices, where first-generation, low-income, and international students come for academic and social support, food pantry access, and supplemental funding,” she continued. “They berated the dean of the college — who spent hours working in good faith to de-escalate —for simply seeking access to a bathroom. They caused $30,000 in damages to a building that houses not just the offices of the president and the dean of the college, but also multiple classrooms and the offices that seek to further diversity, equity, and inclusion at Barnard.”
She continued, “Even though all of the disruptors wore masks, we now know the identity of many of them and are continuing to identify the rest.”
The college president went on to assert her imperviousness to “enormous pressure groups,” defending her previous decision to expel the students and vowing to impose the same measure on anyone else who would “refuse to share our value of respect, inclusion, and academic excellence.”
Concluding one of the harshest commentaries on anti-Zionist demonstrations from an elite college official since Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, Rosenbury said, “Barnard had the courage to take a stand. To protect and defend higher education, others must do the same.”
Rosenbury’s op-ed came just one day before US President Donald Trump vowed to suspend federal funding to any educational institution that refuses to quell riotous demonstrations, a punitive measure which continues his administration’s pledge to crack down on campus antisemitism and the pro-Hamas activists fostering it. The administration also announced pending action against Columbia University, of which Barnard College is an affiliate while maintaining its status as a separate financial and legal entity.
“All federal funding will stop for any college, school, or university that allows illegal protests,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded in 2022. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.”
He continued, “No masks! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Hours earlier, a Task Force to Combat Antisemitism that the Trump administration created in January said that several federal agencies —including the departments of education and human and health service and the General Services Administration — will review over $5 billion worth of federal contracts, grants, and other financial support to Columbia University to “ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Columbia University remains one of the most hostile campuses for Jews employed by or enrolled in an institution of higher education. Since Oct. 7, 2023, it has produced several indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
“Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses — repeatedly overrun by antisemitic students and agitators,” US Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a press release announcing the pending action. “Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination. Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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US Holds Secret Talks With Hamas on Gaza Hostages, Source Says
Demonstrators hold signs and pictures of hostages, as relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas protest demanding the release of all hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Itai Ron
The Trump administration has been conducting secret talks with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on the possibility of releasing US hostages being held in Gaza, two sources briefed on the conversations told Reuters.
US special envoy for hostage affairs Adam Boehler has been holding the direct talks with Hamas in recent weeks in Doha, the sources said, confirming a report by Axios.
Until recently the US had avoided direct discussions with the Islamist group. The US State Department designated Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
Such talks run counter to long-standing US policy against direct contacts with groups that Washington lists as terrorist organizations.
The previous US role in helping to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the Gaza war has been dealing with Israel and Qatari and Egyptian mediators but without any known direct communications between Washington and Hamas.
The Israeli embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Boehler’s office declined to comment.
It was unclear when or how the Israeli government was informed of the talks.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did representatives for Hamas.
The sources said the talks have focused on gaining the release of American hostages still held in Gaza, but one said they also have included discussions about a broader deal to release all remaining hostages and how to reach a long-term truce.
One of the sources said the effort includes an attempt to gain the release of Edan Alexander, of Tenafly, New Jersey, believed to be the last living American hostage held by Hamas.
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff plans to return to the region in coming days to work out a way to either extend the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal or advance to the second phase, a State Department spokesperson said on Monday.
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