Key events
Opening summary
Arab leaders have endorsed a plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip under the future administration of the Palestinian Authority (PA), presenting an alternative to US president Donald Trump’s widely condemned proposal to take over the territory and displace its people.
The prospect of the PA governing Gaza remains far from certain, however, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Israel has ruled out any future role for the body, and Trump closed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) liaison office in Washington during his first term while stepping up support for Israel.
Trump triggered global outrage by suggesting the US “take over” the Gaza Strip and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, while forcing its Palestinian inhabitants to relocate to Egypt or Jordan.
Tuesday’s Arab League summit in Cairo – a day after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his support for Trump’s proposal – offered an alternative with the adoption of a “comprehensive Arab plan”. The Egyptian-devised reconstruction plan for Gaza would cost $53bn and avoid displacing Palestinians from the territory.
The White House said the plan adopted by Arab states did not address Gaza’s reality and that Trump stood by his proposal, Associated Press (AP) reported.
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In other developments:
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A convoy of a dozen ambulances and buses brought 25 wounded and sick Palestinian children from Gaza and across Israel on Tuesday, past the heavily armed forces that bombarded the territory for 15 months. The patients were among the 4,500 people in Gaza believed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be in urgent need of evacuation, and they were transferred to Jordan by a joint operation by the Jordanian army, the country’s health ministry and the WHO.
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Israel’s cutoff of food, fuel, medicine and other supplies to Gaza’s 2 million people has sent prices soaring and humanitarian groups into overdrive trying to distribute dwindling stocks to the most vulnerable. The aid freeze has imperiled the tenuous progress aid workers say they have made to stave off famine over the past six weeks during phase one of the ceasefire deal Israel and Hamas agreed to in January.
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The US state department has reinstated the “foreign terrorist organization” designation for Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi group, fulfilling an order announced by Donald Trump shortly after he took office. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced on Tuesday the department had restored the designation, which carries with it sanctions and penalties for anyone providing “material support” for the group.
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More than 200 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered on Tuesday in front of Columbia University in New York to demonstrate against former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, who was at the campus for a speaking engagement. After more than a year of protests at the campus by both supporters of Israel and opponents of the assault on Gaza after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, the appearance of the former leader of Israel’s far-right was met with expected pushback.
