U.S. President Donald Trump soaked up pageantry during Gaza Peace Summit, as Arab diplomats hope it is enough to keep him engaged on difficult details ahead.
Trump’s Middle East visit had all the showmanship he relishes: an address at the Israeli Knesset, an escort of Egyptian fighter jets, and an impromptu nomination for the Nobel Prize by Pakistan’s prime minister.
“The war in Gaza is over…now the rebuilding begins,” Trump said on Monday when he touched down in the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh – the second leg of a whirlwind Middle East tour that would usher in his Gaza peace deal.
Earlier in the day, Trump visited Israel. The US president used his time addressing the country’s parliament to reaffirm his commitment to the Gazavocate for the advancement of the Abraham Accords. He also deal and ad lobbied Israel’s president to issue a pardon to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces a corruption trial.
Dozens of world leaders waited roughly three hours for Trump to arrive in Sharm el-Sheikh. Trump was greeted coming out of Air Force One by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose government fiercely resisted efforts to forcibly displace Palestinians to the Sinai Peninsula during Israel’s years-long offensive on the Gaza Strip.
In a sign of Sisi’s change of fortune, Trump showered praise on the leader and thanked him for using his ties to Hamas to help seal the ceasefire deal. Sisi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani all signed documents recognizing the ceasefire alongside Trump.
“This is a victory lap,” Merissa Khurma, a nonresident fellow at the Baker Institute, told Middle East Eye. “Does Trump deserve praise for bringing it home? Yes. But we all knew it really just needed pressure on Netanyahu.”
‘A diplomatic trap’
The summit itself was almost tailor-made for Trump as the star. The event drew a diverse crowd ranging from Gulf leaders and European heads of state to the prime minister of Indonesia, and Gianni Infantino, the head of Fifa, football’s international governing body.
Trump soaked it up. He delivered his speech with dozens of world leaders standing behind him and delighted in calling them out with a mix of flattery and taunts. He praised Gulf states, which he referred to as “some of the richest countries”, and applauded Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, and Erdogan. He called Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni “a beautiful, young woman.”
At other times, he hissed at Norway and quietly criticised Spain, a laggard NATO spender. Trump also noted world leaders of countries that he said the US had stopped fighting. “That’s a little war that we stopped,” he said, pointing to the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In an impromptu moment, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif took to the podium and publicly nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize next year.
Behind the pageantry lurked a concern among Arab states that, having sealed the ceasefire, Trump might lose interest in the next phases. By letting Trump put his seal on the deal, one diplomat in the region familiar with the planning told MEE, Cairo and its partners hoped to keep Washington firmly linked to Gaza.
“It was a diplomatic trap to ensure Israel does not resume the war and to get Trump on board with that,” the official said.
The summit was remarkable in that no other flashpoint in the Israel-Palestine conflict has been internationalisZd in such a way, experts said.
“Having so many leaders present is a positive sign for the potential to have the wide buy-in that will be required for the ceasefire to hold and expand to a more durable peace,” Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior US intelligence official now at the Atlantic Council, told MEE.
‘Start cleaning up’
Phase one of the ceasefire was practically complete by the time Trump arrived in Egypt, with Israeli troops withdrawing from central Gaza, though still occupying 58 percent of the enclave, and the last 20 living captives in Gaza released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
“Phase two has started as far as we’re concerned… You can start cleaning up,” Trump said.
Analysts say that Trump was partly able to seal the ceasefire by focusing on Israel and Hamas’s initial acceptance of phase one, while leaving the hard questions of Hamas’s demilitarisation, Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza and the enclave’s governance to a later day.
US and Arab officials told MEE that Arab, European and US officials are expected to start hashing out the details of an international force that will enter Gaza.
For now, Trump told reporters on Monday that the US had given its “approval” for Hamas security forces to deploy in Gaza to prevent crime.
Trump did not use the term “Palestinians” in his address, although he did mention the “people of Gaza” and spent some time speaking with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
“There is little reference in these speeches to the suffering of the Palestinian people. The death and destruction,” Khurma told MEE. “The Palestinians weren’t at the table to come up with Trump’s 20 points.”
Gaza has been reduced to rubble by two years of Israeli bombardment, and over 67,000 Palestinians have been killed in what has been recognised as a genocide by the United Nations.
In his speech, Trump promised that there is “going to be a lot of money coming into Gaza” and that he would publicly name the states that contributed to its reconstruction, including the dollar amount.
But Khurma said Trump’s expectation of Gulf money is not guaranteed. Qatar and the UAE have divergent views on the enclave’s governance, experts say, while Saudi Arabia is running steep budget deficits to pay for the economic vision plan of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“It’s not clear that the Gulf states are just going to pay for the reconstruction with a blank check,” she said.
[ SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST EYE ]
