President Donald Trump‘s new plan to end the war in Gaza won support from Arab and Muslim rulers.
Trump met with eight Muslim and Arab rulers during the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, during which they discussed the conflict. The president assured them that he would not let Israel annex the West Bank and put forward a comprehensive, 21-point plan to end the war in Gaza. The plan was well received, winning crucial support from all.
The meeting was attended by the heads of and senior officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Egypt. The former seven issued a joint statement celebrating the plan.
“We reaffirm our commitment to cooperate with President Trump and emphasize the importance of his leadership in order to end the war and open horizons for a just and lasting peace,” they said, according to Axios.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el Sisi issued a separate statement that echoed the same rhetoric.
“I appreciate the efforts of President Trump to stop the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip in particular, and his pursuit of peace in the Middle East at large,” he said. “I value the proposals he presented during his meeting yesterday in New York with a number of Arab and Islamic leaders, which I view as an important foundation upon which we can build further in the coming period to achieve peace.”
Trump’s peace plan would put regional Arab countries at the center of the peace settlement, deploying a multinational peacekeeping force made up of soldiers from Muslim countries and some Palestinians. A governing structure excluding Hamas would be set up in Gaza, with some involvement of the Palestinian Authority. The new administration would be funded by Muslim countries, which would also pay for reconstruction efforts.
All hostages would be released, a permanent ceasefire would be implemented, and Israeli forces would gradually withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
The plan is a far cry from Trump’s shock announcement early this year that the United States would take over the Gaza Strip and send the Palestinian population elsewhere, triggering panic in Arab capitals.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff followed up on Wednesday with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan to turn the outline into a more detailed plan.
The next hurdle is convincing Israel. Trump is set to argue his case with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits the U.S. on Monday, Axios reported.
“The U.S. outline was good but needed a bit more refining with input from Arab countries,” an Arab official told the outlet. “After it is finalized, the U.S. will have to sell it to Bibi.”
Another barrier to the peace plan is Hamas’s intransigence. The group has refused to budge on its commitment to continue governing the enclave after the war, a condition opposed by every major party aside from Iran.
A source familiar with the meeting told Axios that Trump told the Muslim leaders on Tuesday that the plan was of increased urgency due to Israel’s increasing international isolation over its conduct in Gaza.
As the war approaches its second anniversary, criticism continues to mount against Israel. The humanitarian situation has deteriorated to new lows, particularly after the Israeli military launched a new ground offensive against the capital, Gaza City.
Last week, Israel received one of the biggest blows to its image in its modern history when an independent commission gathered by the United Nations accused the Jewish state of committing genocide in Gaza after an extensive legal analysis.
“The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,” said Chairwoman Navi Pillay, who previously prosecuted perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. “It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”
Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and President Isaac Herzog were specifically held to have displayed genocidal intent.
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Israel has vehemently denied the charge, accusing the commission of accepting evidence from Hamas and engaging in antisemitism.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, which Hamas oversees, over 65,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war and another 163,096 wounded. Israel has denied and criticized these numbers, maintaining that most of those killed have been Hamas fighters or their allies. Roughly 460 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza during combat operations, while another 1,200 Israelis were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
