The Dream Palace of Gaza

In reaction to President Trump's proposal for Gaza, Arab leaders held a summit meeting in Cairo on March 4. They produced a one-hundred-page plan that managed never to mention Hamas or the massacres of October 7, 2023 that began the Gaza war. In fact, the Arab plan is weakest when addressing (or avoiding) the hardest question about Gaza, which is who will provide security and prevent Hamas from replicating the conditions that led to the October 7 attacks. My analysis of the plan was published in National Review, and the text follows.

The Dream Palace of Gaza

Palestinians walk past the rubble of buildings destroyed during an Israeli offensive in Gaza City, February 6, 2025.(Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters)

By Elliott Abrams

You’ve probably never heard of Yasser Arafat International Airport, and the very words may make you laugh. Yet it existed, briefly, under the Oslo Accords. It opened in late 1998 as Gaza International Airport and was renamed for Arafat when the terrorist leader died in 2004. Israel destroyed its radar and control tower and bulldozed its runway in 2001, in reaction to the Second Intifada. Rebuilding was under way in 2006, when Hamas took over Gaza, but obviously Israel wasn’t going to permit Hamas to have an airfield. The site was bombed and shelled by the Israel Defense Forces and then looted by Palestinians.

It has existed only in memory for the past two decades — until now. The creation of an airport for Gaza is part of a 100-page Arab plan, drafted by the Egyptians and adopted on March 4 at an Arab summit in Cairo as an alternative to the Trump proposal. Those who think that Trump’s idea — to empty the “demolition site” of today’s Gaza of all its residents and rebuild it from the ground up — is unrealistic should take a look at the Arab plan, which might work on another planet but certainly not in Gaza. The proposal for a new Gaza international airport is typical of the Arab plan: It makes sense only if you leave behind any notion of history or reality. It is useless as a guide to what comes next for Gaza.

Back in the hope-filled Oslo days, in 2005, when so many diplomats and experts thought peace was just around the corner and the “two-state solution” was a sure thing, the RAND Corporation developed a plan called “The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State.” Here’s how RAND summarized its work:

The research team develop a detailed vision for a modern, high-speed transportation infrastructure, referred to as the Arc. This transportation backbone accommodates substantial population growth in Palestine by linking current urban centers to new neighborhoods via new linear transportation arteries that support both commercial and residential development. The Arc avoids the environmental costs and economic inefficiencies of unplanned, unregulated urban development that might otherwise accompany Palestine’s rapid population growth.

Might work — in southern California circa 2005. Like the new Arab plan for Gaza, RAND’s proposal was lovely to look at, well illustrated, and completely out of touch with the political and military issues at stake. The new Arab plan, called “Early Recovery, Reconstruction, and Development of Gaza,” does not mention Hamas and deals with security issues largely by ignoring them. It suggests that if we all just recommit to the “two-state solution,” security issues will magically fade away.

The Arab plan insists that no one should move out of Gaza and that the Palestinian Authority should run it very soon. It is “imperative to respect the desire and legitimate right of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip to remain in their land, to which they have demonstrated their unwavering attachment.” Well, sort of: It’s easy to “demonstrate unwavering attachment” when no one gives you the option of leaving (except Donald Trump). Try offering to Gazans visas to places where they can live decently, and the degree of their “unwavering commitment” to Gaza would become a lot clearer.

Who would manage Gaza, under the Arab plan, during the proposed $50 billion reconstruction project?

A Gaza Administration Committee will be established to manage Gaza’s affairs for a transitional period of six months. This committee is an independent body comprised of technocrats and non-factional figures working under the umbrella of the Palestinian government; its establishment comes within the framework of preparations for the full return of the Palestinian National Authority to Gaza.

Six months? Trump far more realistically proposed that rebuilding Gaza would take decades. Putting that aside, who would provide security? The Arab plan says Egypt and Jordan have started training Palestinian police, but no timing or numbers are offered. The plan acknowledges that more will be needed: “It is proposed that the UN Security Council (UNSC) commences a study concerning establishing international presence in Palestinian territories (West Bank and Gaza), including through the adoption of a UNSC resolution to deploy international protection/ peacekeeping forces.”

Oh, boy. The famously divided Security Council will do a “study” whose goal is to send international forces — to Gaza and the West Bank. Why the reference to the West Bank here, when the subject is supposed to be Gaza? To prevent Israeli forces from fighting terrorism in the West Bank, just as UNIFIL got in the way of the Israelis in South Lebanon without ever confronting Hezbollah itself. It’s hard to think of anything less likely to help bring security to the West Bank than a U.N. force.

As to Gaza, it’s worth repeating that Hamas is never mentioned. Instead the Arab plan says, “The issue of multiple armed Palestinian factions remains challenging. However, it is one that can be addressed, and even resolved permanently, only if its root causes are tackled by providing a clear political prospect and a credible process that works to establish the Palestinian State and restores the legitimate rights of the Palestinian People to their rightful owners.”

“Challenging”? In other words, the authors of the plan have no real idea how to deal with terrorist groups — except the ridiculous notion that if Israel only agreed to the “two-state solution” and “restoring the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” those “challenging” terrorist murderers would simply go home.

They would not, because, as has been very clear for decades, their goal is not at all and never has been to build a Palestinian state or restore Palestinian “legitimate rights.” Their goal is to destroy Israel. Indeed, the Palestinian Authority itself under both Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the current president, has repeatedly walked away from Israeli proposals for Palestinian statehood.

The United States rightly rejected the new Arab plan. A National Security Council spokesman said, “The current proposal does not address the reality that Gaza is currently uninhabitable and residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance. President Trump stands by his vision to rebuild Gaza free from Hamas.”

Call that the reality principle at work: much more realistic than the Arab plan, at least, about current living conditions in Gaza and about the real problem — Hamas. The Arab plan, which has no answer to the threat of Hamas, instead uses a hundred pages to take us back to pretty pictures of Arab architecture, nice charts and maps, and the dream of “Gaza International Airport.” By comparison, the Trump plan is pragmatic, down to earth, even hardheaded. No airport, to be sure — but no Hamas either.