Syria president in Cairo for Arab summit on Gaza: state media
Updated 32 sec ago
AFP
DAMASCUS: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in Cairo on Tuesday to attend an Arab League summit on countering US President Donald Trump's widely condemned plan for Gaza, Syrian state media reported.
Sharaa arrived “to attend the extraordinary Arab Summit in Cairo on developments on the Palestinian issue,” state news agency SANA reported.
Egypt to host emergency Arab League summit to counter Trump’s Gaza plans
The Arab League summit in Cairo will address Trump’s Gaza plans and efforts to protect Palestinian rights
Egypt’s reconstruction plan includes recovery, infrastructure restoration, and a two-state solution, but financing concerns remain
Updated 04 March 2025
Arab News
DUBAI: An emergency Arab League summit will be held in Cairo on Tuesday to counter US President Donald Trump’s Gaza plans.
Organized by Egypt, the summit aims to respond to Trump’s proposals to take control of Gaza and resettle Palestinians, as well as to address the Israeli Prime Minister’s stance on ending the ceasefire and resuming hostilities in Gaza.
The summit will focus on creating a unified Arab response that protects Palestinian rights and makes Gaza habitable again.
Egypt’s Plan
Egypt has yet to release full details of its proposal, but former Egyptian diplomat Mohamed Hegazy outlined a plan in three technical phases over three to five years.
The first phase, lasting six months, would focus on early recovery and debris removal. The second phase would involve an international conference to set out detailed reconstruction plans and restore infrastructure.
The final phase would include the provision of housing and services, as well as the establishment of a political track for implementing a two-state solution, with an independent Palestine alongside Israel.
Experts have raised concerns over the plan’s financing, with the UN estimating the cost of rebuilding Gaza at over $50 billion.
Trump’s Resettlement Plan
The summit follows US President Trump’s statement last month, in which he proposed taking control of Gaza and resettling Palestinians in Egypt and Jordan.
Tensions have heightened as Israel blocked all humanitarian aid to Gaza on March 1, citing Hamas’s refusal to extend the ceasefire, which was meant to begin its second phase.
Far-right Israel minister Smotrich heading to the US
His trip comes with US President Donald Trump expected to announce whether to back the annexation of all or part of the West Bank
Updated 04 March 2025
AFP
JERUSALEM: Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who supports the annexation of the occupied West Bank, said on Tuesday that he was traveling to the United States for a brief visit.
“The goal of this visit is to strengthen economic cooperation between Israel and the United States... and deepen the strategic alliance between our two countries,” Smotrich wrote on social media platform X.
His trip comes with US President Donald Trump expected to announce whether to back the annexation of all or part of the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Smotrich, an ultranationalist settler whose support is key to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s parliamentary majority, said he would meet US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as well as other US government officials.
The visit coincides with an Arab League summit on Tuesday in Cairo, where leaders are discussing a counterproposal to Trump’s February 4 plan for US control of Gaza.
Under that plan, Palestinians living in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip would be transferred to third countries, and the coastal territory would be turned into what Trump called “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Asked when unveiling the plan whether he backed Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Trump said he would probably “make an announcement” on the issue within four weeks.
In 2024, the International Court of Justice, the UN’s top legal body, issued an advisory opinion saying that Israel’s prolonged presence in the West Bank was unlawful.
The United Nations regularly condemns Israel’s settlement expansion in the territory as illegal under international law.
Syrian refugee family that Pope Francis brought to Rome prays for him as they build new life
Nearly a decade after Pope Francis plucked them from a refugee camp in Greece, a Syrian couple and their child have carved out a quiet life in suburban Rome
While they observe Ramadan, they’re praying for the hospitalized pope, whom they refer to as a gift from heaven – and a leader who showed the world migrants aren’t to be feared
Updated 04 March 2025
AP
ROME: Just before breaking the Ramadan fast on Sunday evening, Hasan Zaheda played basketball with his son in the tiny courtyard of the basement-level apartment on Rome’s outskirts where the refugee family is rebuilding their lives.
They have no pictures from their native Syria – they fled Damascus at the height of the civil war with only one change of clothes, diapers and milk for their toddler. But there is a framed photo of little Riad meeting Pope Francis, who brought them and two other Muslim families back with him to Italy from refugee camps in the Greek island of Lesbos almost a decade ago.
“He’s a gift from paradise,” Zaheda said Sunday, chuckling. “Pope Francis, a gift from our God, that God sent us to save us.”
As the Zahedas began to observe the holy month of Ramadan, Francis, 88, entered his third week of battling pneumonia in a hospital not far away. The least they can do, the family said, is to be close to him in prayer night and day.
“We look for his health bulletin every day,” said the mother, Nour Essa, 39, after recalling meeting the pontiff suddenly in Lesbos. “What shocked me the most is that the father of the church was a modest man, who didn’t have prejudices, open toward other ethnicities and religion.”
The family journeyed on the pope’s plane – one of the most visible moments of advocacy for migrants that marked Francis’ papacy. The Zahedas remember how kindly Francis patted Riad’s head as he passed down the aisle to speak with journalists.
But “miraculous” as it appeared to them, it was only the beginning of a new life in Italy to which they’re still adjusting.
Essa, a biologist, and Zaheda, an architect who worked as a civil servant in Damascus, decided to leave Syria in 2015 after he was drafted into the military. They sold their house to pay for a smuggler, walking through the night trying not to make a sound in the desert and at one point riding for ten hours in different trucks.
After scrambling to get through Daesh-controlled territory, they made it into Turkiye and then had three failed attempts to reach the Greek islands by boat before arriving in Lesbos in early 2016.
“I always thank God that my son was so small, and that he has no memory of all these things,” Essa said as Riad watched a Syrian soap opera in the cramped living room with his grandfather, who fled about a year after them. On the walls, Hasan’s haunting paintings of white faces against swirling black and red tell of the parents’ all-too-vivid memories.
After more than one month in a Lesbos camp, the family was approached for an interview by a stranger – Daniela Pompei, the head of migration and integration for the Catholic charity Sant’Egidio.
She had been tasked with finding families with appropriate paperwork that Francis could bring back to Rome with him, and asked them to make a decision on the spot. They accepted, and the charity, with Vatican funds, eventually brought more than 300 refugees from Greece and 150 from another papal trip to Cyprus in 2021.
Sant’Egidio’s goal was to spare migrants longer journeys by sea across different routes in the Mediterranean, which have killed tens of thousands of asylum-seekers willing to “die for hope” over the years, Pompei said.
But the real test has been integration, from processing their asylum cases to learning Italian to school and job placement. Initiatives like the pope’s make all the difference because they signal to the refugees that their new communities are willing to welcome them, despite faith differences.
“The pope has long appealed to open parishes, to welcome at least one family in each parish, to push us Catholics too to counter what he called, with a very strong term in Lampedusa, ‘the globalization of indifference,’” Pompei said.
In the characteristic Roman accent they’ve acquired, the Zaheda parents told of their challenges – having to reenroll in university so their degrees can be recognized, helping their families come to Europe, taking care of their son.
Working or studying 12 hours a day, they rarely have time to socialize with other Syrian families and the migrants who comprise most of their neighbors in the modest brick-faced apartment buildings as well as most of Riad’s classmates.
His best friend is from Ecuador, and Riad plans to study Spanish in middle school. He’s joined a local basketball team, and pictures from the court line his bedroom, where a large Syrian flag hangs by his bunkbed. He likes to read The Little Prince in English, but his Arabic is tentative, even though he spends most afternoons with his grandfather, who loves to sketch local churches.
For Sunday’s iftar – the meal breaking the day’s fast – the family topped a little table with yogurt-and-chickpea tisiyeh salad and take-out pizza in typical Roman flavors like zucchini flowers and anchovies.
As Riad packed his backpack for the school week, his parents said their future hinges on the little boy – for whom they will likely stay in Italy, instead of joining relatives in France or returning to a Syria they probably couldn’t recognize.
“I always wish that he can build his future, that he can build a position as the son of an undocumented migrant who arrived in Italy and who wanted to leave his mark in a new country,” Zaheda said.
Tunisia opposition figures go on trial on state security charges
The defendants include politicians Jawhar Ben Mbarek, Abdelhamid Jelassi and Issam Chebbi, founder of the opposition National Salvation Front coalition — all staunch critics of Saied
Updated 04 March 2025
AFP
TUNIS: The trial of several prominent Tunisian opposition figures accused of national security offenses is set to begin Tuesday, with rights groups denouncing the case as politically motivated.
The around 40 high-profile defendants include former diplomats, politicians, lawyers and media figures, some of whom have been outspoken critics of President Kais Saied.
The charges against them are “plotting against the state security” and “belonging to a terrorist group,” which could entail hefty sentences and even capital punishment, according to lawyers.
Saied was elected in 2019 after Tunisia emerged as the only democracy following the Arab Spring. But in 2021 he staged a sweeping power grab, and rights groups have since warned of a rollback on freedoms.
The defendants include politicians Jawhar Ben Mbarek, Abdelhamid Jelassi and Issam Chebbi, founder of the opposition National Salvation Front coalition — all staunch critics of Saied.
In a letter from his cell, Ben Mbarek called the trial a form of “judicial harassment” aimed at “the methodical elimination of critical voices,” claiming the accusations were baseless.
Activists Khayam Turki and Chaima Issa, businessman Kamel Eltaief, and Bochra BelHajj Hmida, a former member of parliament and human rights activist now living in France, have also been charged in the case.
Some of the defendants have been detained since a flurry of arrests in February 2023, after Saied dubbed them “terrorists.”
Others remain free pending trial, as some have fled abroad, according to the defense committee.
On Sunday, during a visit to the streets of the capital Tunis, Saied told a woman who asked him to intervene for her imprisoned sons — unrelated to the trial — that he “never intervenes” in judicial matters.
“Let this be clear to everyone,” he was heard telling her in a video posted on the presidency’s official Facebook page.
Other critics of Saied have been detained and charged in different cases, including under a law to combat “false news.”
In early February, the leader of Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party Rached Ghannouchi, 83, was sentenced to 22 years in prison for plotting against state security, though in a separate case.
The United Nations urged Tunisian authorities last month to bring “an end to the pattern of arrests, arbitrary detentions and imprisonment of dozens of human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, activists and politicians.”
Tunisia’s foreign ministry dismissed the UN statement with “astonishment” and denounced its “inaccuracies.”
“Tunisia can give lessons to those who think they are in a position to make statements,” it said.
Egypt’s alternative to Trump’s ‘Gaza Riviera’ aims to sideline Hamas
The draft said the board would comprise key Arab countries, members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the United States, Britain, the European Union and its member states, and others
The Egyptian draft does not tackle the issue of what actions could be taken if Hamas refuses to disarm or step aside from politics
Updated 04 March 2025
Reuters
DOHA: A plan for Gaza drawn up by Egypt as a counter to US President Donald Trump’s ambition for a Middle East Riviera would sideline Hamas and replace it with interim bodies controlled by Arab, Muslim and Western states, according to a draft seen by Reuters.
The Egyptian vision for Gaza, which is due to be presented at an Arab League summit on Tuesday, does not specify whether the proposal would be implemented before or after any permanent peace deal to end the war triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks.
Trump’s plan, which envisioned clearing Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants, appeared to back away from long-standing US Middle East policy focused on a two-state solution and sparked anger among Palestinians and Arab nations.
Palestinian children gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, March 3, 2025. (REUTERS)
Who will run Gaza after the conflict remains the great unanswered question in negotiations over the future of the enclave. Hamas has so far rejected the idea of any proposal being imposed on Palestinians by other states.
Cairo’s plan does not tackle critical issues such as who will foot the bill for Gaza’s reconstruction or outline any specific details around how Gaza would be governed, nor how an armed group as powerful as Hamas would be pushed aside.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Egypt's draft Gaza plan has no role for Hamas - draft proposal
• Arab states seek to counter Trump's Gaza vision
• Governance Assistance Mission would replace Hamas-run government International Stabilisation Force would provide security
Under the Egyptian plan, a Governance Assistance Mission would replace the Hamas-run government in Gaza for an unspecified interim period and would be responsible for humanitarian aid and for kick-starting reconstruction of the enclave, which has been devastated by the war.
“There will be no major international funding for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Gaza if Hamas remains the dominant and armed political element on the ground controlling local governance,” a preamble outlining the draft Egyptian plan’s objectives said.
A Palestinian Hamas militant shakes hands with a child as they stand guard as people gather on the day of the handover of hostages. (REUTERS)
Details of Egypt’s proposed framework for Gaza’s future have not been previously reported.
Egypt, Jordan and Gulf Arab states have for almost a month been scrambling to formulate a diplomatic offensive to counter Trump’s plan. A number of ideas have been proposed, with Egypt’s considered the frontrunner.
Reuters was unable to determine whether Arab leaders would support the plan presented by Egypt.
The plan does not specify who would run the governance mission. It said it would, “draw on the expertise of Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere to help Gaza recover as quickly as possible.”
The draft proposal was shared with Reuters by an official involved in Gaza negotiations who wished to remain anonymous because the draft has not yet been made public.
The plan firmly rejects the US proposal for mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, which Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan see as a security threat.
“President Trump has been clear that Hamas cannot continue to govern Gaza,” White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said when asked about Egypt’s Gaza plan and whether the US would support it.
“While the President stands by his bold vision for a post-war Gaza, he welcomes input from our Arab partners in the region. It’s clear his proposals have driven the region to come to the table rather than allow this issue to devolve into further crisis,” Hughes said.
STABILISATION FORCE
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters the group knows of no such proposal by Egypt.
“The day after in Gaza must only be decided by the Palestinians,” he said. “Hamas rejects any attempt to impose projects or any form of non-Palestinian administration, or the presence of any foreign forces on the land of the Gaza Strip.”
The Egyptian draft does not mention future elections.
Egypt’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the office of Israel’s prime minister, whose support for any plan is seen as vital to secure a commitment that any future reconstruction will not be destroyed again.
Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has ruled the coastal enclave since 2007. It launched the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and started the Gaza war.
A January 19 ceasefire brought a temporary end to the fighting but the first phase of the deal expired on Saturday with no sign of an agreement to move to the second phase.
The Egyptian draft does not tackle the issue of what actions could be taken if Hamas refuses to disarm or step aside from politics.
The proposal envisions an International Stabilization Force drawn primarily from Arab states that would take over the role of providing security from the militant group, with the eventual establishment of a new local police force.
Both security and governance bodies would be “arranged, guided and supervised” by a steering board. The draft said the board would comprise key Arab countries, members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the United States, Britain, the European Union and its member states, and others.
The plan does not detail a central governing role for the Palestinian Authority (PA), which opinion polls show has little support among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
A Palestinian official told Reuters that, like the West Bank, Gaza falls under the PA’s jurisdiction — and it must be run by Palestinians.
“We agreed with the Egyptians on a committee made of Palestinian experts that will help the Palestinian Authority in running the Gaza Strip for six months. The committee is made of Palestinian experts and coordinates with the PA, and doesn’t answer to non-Palestinian bodies,” said the official, who asked not to be named for sensitivity.
RECONSTRUCTION BILL
Since Hamas drove the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza after a brief civil war in 2007, it has crushed all opposition there. Supported by Iran, it built an extensive security apparatus and military organization based around a vast network of tunnels — much of which Israel says it has now destroyed.
The plan does not say who would pay to rebuild Gaza, a bill estimated by the UN at more than $53 billion. Two sources have told Reuters that Gulf and Arab states would need to commit at least $20 billion in the initial phase of reconstruction.
Egypt’s proposal envisions that states on the steering board could establish a fund to support the interim governing body and arrange donor conferences to seek contributions for a longer-term reconstruction and development plan for Gaza.
The plan does not contain any specific financial pledges.
Oil- and gas-producing Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates could be vital sources of funding from the region.
The United Arab Emirates, for instance, sees Hamas and other militant groups as an existential threat and is unlikely to offer any funding until Hamas has been sidelined.
The foreign ministries in Qatar and the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s international media office did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Egypt’s plan, or to questions about their willingness to commit funds to rebuild Gaza.
The draft plan also calls on the steering board to coordinate with a Civil Society Advisory Board, consisting of academics, NGO leaders and other notable figures.
