What solutions for Gaza have the international community put forward?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting Arab foreign ministers and a leading Palestinian official in Cairo today as he calls for a pause in the fighting in Gaza.

Washington wants an "immediate and sustained ceasefire" between Israel and Hamas, while the British government has demanded an "immediate pause in fighting", followed by "progress towards a sustainable ceasefire". But the international community has been less forthcoming with specific ideas for how to move forward. 

As the violence continues, some have suggested creating a demilitarised zone, or even transforming Gaza into a rich, waterfront property empire.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What did the commentators say?

"Reaching a peaceful solution is easy if people would only make the decision to do it," Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the US, told The New Statesman. 

The royal believes the solution is a ceasefire that leads to a "prolonged truce of at least five years", said the magazine. A Palestinian state would then be created and recognised by the international community – including Israel – and negotiations would begin between Israel and Palestine, "as two sovereign states, for the resolution of the conflict between them".

Donald Trump's son-in-law and former foreign policy adviser Jared Kushner has put forward an alternative idea that "sparked a backlash", said The Independent. During an interview last month at Harvard University, Kushner praised the "very valuable" potential of Gaza's "waterfront property" and suggested that Israel should "clean up" the strip after expelling Gazan civilians to the Israeli Negev desert.

Broadcaster Jon Stewart has had his say too. He suggested last month that the Arab countries who "claim Palestine as their top priority" should "come in and form a demilitarised zone between Israel and a free Palestinian state", said The Guardian. The Saudis, Egypt, UAE, Qatar and Jordan could "all form like a Nato arrangement guaranteeing security for both sides", Stewart said on his "The Daily Show". "Anything is better than the clusterf**k cycle we have now." 

But Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East Security programme at the Center for a New American Security think tank, told Business Insider that "every American administration going back decades has discussed some version" of Stewart's suggestion. Anna Jacobs, a senior Gulf analyst based in Qatar for the Belgium-headquartered International Crisis Group, added that Stewart's idea would risk "angering Iran", which is a "massive concern for the region", said the news site.

Writing for The Spectator, Stephen Daisley suggested another "way to break this impasse". Recalling how the League of Nations created a mandate for the British administration of Palestine in the 1920s, he argued that the "basic concept is still sound". So "if the international community wants Israel to stop bombing Gaza", the international community should "take over Gaza and stop Hamas attacking Israel".

More familiar suggestions have also been repeated. In November, the United Nations called for the international community to move towards a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with Jerusalem serving as the capital of both states.

But, said Reuters, the idea would hit the long-standing obstacle of Palestinians wanting East Jerusalem, "which includes the Old City's sites sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike", to be the capital of their state, while Israel insists that Jerusalem should remain its "indivisible and eternal" capital.

What next?

Blinken is meeting foreign ministers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan today. Also present will be the Emirati international cooperation minister and the general secretary of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's executive committee, an Egyptian foreign ministry source told Reuters.

Although the subject of the meeting in Cairo has not been officially disclosed, Egyptian security sources said that Arab nations would present plans for a political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Such long-term plans had been "put on hold", said Al Jazeera, as mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the US have sought to secure a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza.