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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Funeral ceremony for former Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine, outskirts of Beirut, Feb. 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

Hezbollah views the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria as “a major strategic loss” that weakens its efforts against Israel, according to a co-founder of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group, which continues to face mounting challenges after losing key leaders in its latest war with the Jewish state.

“There’s no doubt that the political transformation which took place in Syria was a major strategic loss — we can’t deny that,” Ali Fayyad, a long-time senior Hezbollah official who also serves as a member of the Lebanese parliament, told the Responsible Statecraft, an online magazine of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft think tank, in a new interview published on Tuesday.

Last month, Ahmed al-Sharaa became Damascus’s transitional president after leading a rebel campaign that ousted long-time Syrian leader Assad, whose Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war.

According to an announcement by the military command that led the offensive against Assad, Sharaa was given the authority to form a temporary legislative council for the transitional period and to suspend the country’s constitution.

The collapse of Assad’s regime was the result of an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate.

“Our previous ties with the [Assad] regime are linked to one specific issue related to the necessity of establishing a balance against Israel in a complicated regional struggle,” Fayyad said. “Our ties with the regime were strictly tied to these considerations.”

With the fall of the Assad regime, Shi’ite Hezbollah not only lost its main transit route for weapons deliveries from Iran via Syria but also must now contend with new leadership in Damascus aligned with the same Sunni extremist groups it once fought to support Assad.

During the interview, Fayyad explained that Hezbollah is not looking for trouble with Syria’s new leadership but rather supports Lebanon’s stance on maintaining balanced relations between the two countries. However, he also emphasized the importance of protecting minorities, respecting freedoms, and preventing the emergence of another oppressive regime in Syria.

“We are also keeping an eye on the stance of the new leadership in Syria towards Israel,” Fayyad said. “This stance is confusing and poses a lot of questions, as Israel infiltrated and occupied Syrian territory without any stance taken from the new leadership. This is something strange from every legal and political standpoint which you wouldn’t find in any other country.”

Following Assad’s fall in December, Israel moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state. The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War.

Syria’s new government has called for Israel to withdraw its forces but has used a noticeably less hostile tone than Hezbollah or its backers in Iran when speaking about the Jewish state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month that Israel would not tolerate the presence of HTS or any forces affiliated with Syria’s new rulers south of Damascus and demanded the area be demilitarized.

Also last month, Israel said it would keep troops in five locations in southern Lebanon past a Feb. 18 ceasefire deadline for their withdrawal, as Israeli leaders sought to reassure northern residents that they can return home safely.

In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah. Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from Beirut’s southern border, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.

Fayyad said that Lebanon has the right to use force, if needed, to put an end to the “Israeli occupation.”

“Hezbollah remains committed to resistance and considers that it is Lebanon’s right to confront any Israeli aggression,” he continued. “The Israelis being in five points is something which we consider to be occupation, and this gives Lebanon the right to use all possible means to liberate these occupied territories.”

Since Assad’s fall, the new Syrian government has sought to strengthen ties with Arab and Western leaders. Damascus’s new diplomatic relationships reflect a distancing from its previous allies, Iran and Russia. For example, Tehran has not reopened its embassy in Syria, which was a central part of its self-described “Axis of Resistance” against US-backed Israel, including Assad’s regime and a network of terrorist proxies — primarily Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The new Syrian government appears focused on reassuring the West and working to get sanctions lifted, which date back to 1979 when the US labeled Syria a state sponsor of terrorism and were significantly increased following Assad’s violent response to the anti-government protests.

The Assad regime’s brutal crackdown on opposition protests in 2011 sparked the Syrian civil war, during which Syria was suspended from the Arab League for more than a decade.

Referring to their relationship with Washington, Fayyad said Hezbollah has no bilateral issues with the United States but emphasized that their stance is tied to “the Palestinian cause and this alignment [with Israel] which ignores human rights and the UN laws and the right of the Palestinians to self-determination.”

“The problem with the American administration is this issue first of all and second this intervention in the affairs of other societies and countries, and exercising unjust hegemony over international relations,” he added.

The post Hezbollah Admits Fall of Assad Regime in Syria a ‘Major Strategic Loss’ for Terror Group first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

US President Donald speaking in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, in Washington, DC on March 3, 2025. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect

US President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday 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.

“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.”

Trump’s statement follows a slew of campus building occupations covered recently by The Algemeiner.

In New York City, the anti-Zionist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) on Wednesday occupied the Milbank Hall administrative building at Barnard College to protest recent disciplinary sanctions imposed on student activists who raided a classroom to spew pro-Hamas propaganda. Posting on Instagram, the group proclaimed that its members were “flooding the building despite Barnard shutting down campus.” Later, they reportedly assaulted a staff member, who, according to a source familiar with the situation, required medical attention at a local hospital.

Last month, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Swarthmore College invaded the school’s Parrish Hall dressed like Hamas fighters, their faces wrapped with and concealed by keffiyehs. The move came as a surprise. While the group had announced an “emergency rally” scheduled for noon that day, there was little indication that it planned on commandeering the building and remaining inside of it indefinitely.

By the time the college formally warned the students that their behavior would trigger disciplinary measures, they had shouted slogans through bullhorns, attempted to break into offices that had been locked to keep them out, and pounded the doors of others that refused to admit them access. Meanwhile, SJP collaborators reportedly circumvented security’s lockdown of the building to smuggle food inside. Several students then grew impatient and attempted to end the lockdown themselves by storming the building, and in doing so caused a physical altercation with security, whom they proceeded to pelt with expletives and other imprecations.

Swarthmore has temporarily suspended the group’s permission to operate on the campus while school officials complete an investigation of the incident.

Bowdoin College also saw a building occupation in February, when members of its SJP chapter stormed Smith Union and installed an encampment there in response to Trump’s proposing that the US “take over” the Gaza Strip and transform it into a hub for tourism and economic dynamism. The roughly 50 students residing inside the building had vowed not to leave until Bowdoin agreed to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Ultimately, the college imposed light disciplinary sanctions on eight students — who were later given the sobriquet “Bowdoin Eight” by their collaborators — it identified as ringleaders of the unauthorized demonstration, sentencing them to probation.

Tuesday’s statement is not the first time that Trump has warned higher education institutions that failing to rein in anti-Zionist agitators could result in sustained injuries to their financial health.

As a candidate for president, he suggested taxing their lucrative endowment funds, some of which are valued at dollar amounts that equal or eclipse the entire gross domestic product (GDP) of dozens of small but prosperous countries across the world. For example, Harvard University — which recently settled a major antisemitism lawsuit it fought tooth and nail to discredit — is notably richer than the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Kingdom of Bahrain, and the oil-rich nation of Trinidad and Tobago.

The Trump administration appears to already be preparing to impose financial penalties on colleges and universities.

On Monday, a recently created Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced 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 awarded 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.”

Responding to the news on Monday, Columbia University said it is “fully committed to combatting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination” and that it is “resolute that calling for, promoting, or glorifying violence or terror has no place at our university.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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