Saudi Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...is spearheading urgent Arab efforts to develop a plan for Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
’s future as a counter to US President Donald Trump
...Oh, noze! Not him!...
’s ambition for a Middle East riviera cleared of its Paleostinian inhabitants, 10 sources told Rooters.
Draft ideas will be discussed at a meeting in Riyadh this month of countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Proposals may involve a Gulf-led reconstruction fund and a deal to sideline Hamas
..always the voice of sweet reason...
, five of the people said.
This month?? Gentlemen, we’re on Trump time now — you need to figure it out in days, or he’ll drive past you to his new reality. Look at what’s been happening back home, while the Democrats and the RINOs prepared holding actions for the usual first hundred days.
Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies were aghast at Trump’s plan to permanently "clean out" all Paleostinians from Gaza and resettle most of them in Jordan and Egypt, an idea immediately rejected by Cairo and Amman and seen in most of the region as deeply destabilizing.What kind of evil is it to demand that 1.5 million people stay locked in for years in the midst of rubble and asbestos dust and overflowing poo ponds, regularly being blown up by by leftover munitions in every single building and falling through holes in the ground into the remnants of 500 miles of Hamas tunnels? They should all be ashamed of themselves.
The dismay in Saudi Arabia was aggravated, sources said, because the plan would nix the kingdom’s demand for a clear path to Paleostinian statehood as a condition to normalize ties with Israel — something that would also pave the way for an ambitious military pact between Riyadh and Washington, shoring up the kingdom’s defenses against Iran.Riyadh has been demanding that since the 1990s. Once upon a time Israel would have been willing to trade just about anything for peace, but they don’t need that anymore, especially not from Saudi Arabia. Timing, as they say, is everything .
Rooters spoke to 15 sources in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere to build a picture of the hurried efforts by Arab states to pull together existing proposals into a new plan they can sell to the US president — even potentially calling it a "Trump plan" to win his approval.Because he is so shallow and narcissistic that such a blatant ploy will definitely fool him into falling for a tissue of a farrago of a fluffy bit of nothingness. Honestly, guys, if you’re going be manipulative, it’s really best not to tell the reporters so that the whole world finds out. Do you really think that President Trump does not read newspapers?
All the sources declined to be identified because the issue involves international or domestic sensitivities and they were not authorized to speak in public.I’ll bet.
One Arab government source said at least four proposals had already been drafted for Gaza’s future, with an Egyptian proposal emerging as central to the Arab push for an alternative to Trump’s idea.At least they got to the brainstorming stage…
THE EGYPTIAN PROPOSALThe latest Egyptian proposal involves forming a national Paleostinian committee to govern Gaza without Hamas involvement, international participation in reconstruction without displacing Paleostinians abroad, and movement toward a two-state solution, three Egyptian security sources said.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Paleostinian representatives will review and discuss the plan in Riyadh before it is presented at a scheduled Arab summit on February 27, the Arab government source said.
The role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
...Crown Prince and modernizer of Saudi Arabia as of 2016. The Turks hate him, so he must be all right, despite the occasional brutal murder of Qatar-owned journalists...
, widely known as MBS, is shaping up to be key.
"We are telling the Americans we have a plan that works. Our meeting with MBS is going to be critical. He is taking the lead," a Jordanian official said.
The crown prince had a warm relationship with the first Trump administration and is increasingly central to Arab ties with the United States during the new Trump era.
Long a major regional partner of the United States, the crown prince is expanding Saudi Arabia’s relationship through business and global power politics.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is holding a conference in Miami this month, which Rooters revealed Trump is expected to attend. Riyadh is also expected to host his upcoming talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
to try to end the Ukraine war.
The White House did not respond to several requests for comment on this story.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration...
, speaking on Thursday, referred to the coming Arab meeting, saying: "Right now the only plan — they don’t like it — but the only plan is the Trump plan. So if they’ve got a better plan, now’s the time to present it."
Spokespeople for Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Israel did not immediately respond to Rooters requests for comment.
BUFFER ZONE
Clear plans for Gaza’s post-war future have already proven hard to develop, as they require positions on contentious debates regarding the territory’s internal governance, security management, funding and reconstruction.
Israel has already rejected any role for Hamas or the Paleostinian Authority in governing Gaza or ensuring security there. Arab countries and the United States have said they do not want to put troops on the ground to do that.
Gulf states, which have historically paid for reconstruction in Gaza, have said they do not want to do so this time without guarantees that Israel will not again destroy what they build. Israel is unlikely to make guarantees that prevent it from acting against threats from the territory.
Jordan’s King Abdullah emphasized to Trump on Monday at their meeting in the White House that he was working with Saudi Arabia and Egypt on a Gaza plan that would work, a Jordanian official said.
Anything to not have to take in significant numbers of Gazans, right, Your Majesty?
In televised comments after the meeting, Abdullah said the countries would review an Egyptian plan and "we will be in Saudi Arabia to discuss how we can work with the president and the United States."Rooters could not immediately reach Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi for comment. After Abdullah’s meeting with Trump, Safadi said: "We are now working on crystallizing the Arab plan."
Initial proposals shared by the three Egyptian security sources relating to reconstruction and financing appear to be in advanced stages.
A buffer zone and physical barrier would be erected to prevent tunnels from being built across Gaza’s border with Egypt. As soon as the rubble is removed, 20 areas will be established as temporary living zones. Around 50 Egyptian and other foreign companies would be brought in to carry out the work.
Financing would involve international and Gulf money, a regional source with knowledge of the matter said. A potential fund could be named the Trump Fund for Reconstruction, an Arab government official said.
However,
if you can't say something nice about a person some juicy gossip will go well...
the most difficult issues regarding Gaza’s governance and internal security remain to be decided, the official said.
Forcing Hamas out of any role in Gaza would be critical, said the Arab official and the three Egyptian sources.
Hamas has previously said it is willing to cede government in Gaza to a national committee, but it would want a role in choosing its members and would not accept the deployment of any ground forces without its consent. Israel will be loath to agree to such terms.
The three Egyptian sources said that while nothing in the plan was very new, they believed it was good enough to change Trump’s mind and that it could be imposed on Hamas and the Paleostinian Authority under the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas
...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase....
’NOT PLEASED’
Saudi annoyance over Gaza had already been building before Trump’s announcement.
The kingdom had repeatedly said normalization with Israel was conditional on a path to creating a Paleostinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
That stance hardened as Saudi public anger grew at the destruction and death in Gaza in the war brought on by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel. Thousands of Hamas-led
In November, the crown prince publicly accused Israel of genocide during an Islamic summit and doubled down on the need for a two-state solution. Frustration was running high in the kingdom over the ongoing war, two regional intelligence sources said.
Washington appeared ready to ignore Riyadh’s demand for two states. The day before his Gaza announcement, Trump was asked whether a normalization deal could proceed without a two-state solution. He said: "Saudi Arabia is going to be very helpful."
Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, had held meetings in Riyadh in late January. Two senior diplomats said Witkoff laid out a three-month timeline for the normalization process.
But Saudi frustration quickly turned into surprise and then anger when Trump announced his Gaza idea. "He is not pleased," a source close to the Saudi royal court said of Prince Mohammed’s reaction.
The level of anger was quickly evident in state media broadcasts — which analysts say are often a measure of official Saudi viewpoints — with television news reports personally excoriating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"They are outraged," said Aziz Alghashian, a Saudi analyst familiar with official thinking, describing the mood among senior Saudi officials. "This is outrageous. More than frustration, this is on another level."
Many experts say Trump may be using an old bargaining ploy from his diplomatic playbook, setting out an extreme position as an opening gambit for negotiations. During his first term, he often issued what were widely seen as over-the-top foreign policy pronouncements, many of which never came to fruition.
Still, it has complicated the normalization talks.
Former Saudi intelligence head Prince Turki al-Faisal, who holds no current role in the government, said in a CNN
...formerly the
Cable News Network, now who know what it might stand for...
interview last week that if Trump visited Riyadh, "I’m sure he will get an earful from the leadership here."
Asked if he could see any prospect of normalization talks advancing with Israel, he said: "Not at all."
Not that his opinion matters, since he and his entire generation were forcefully put out to pasture by MBS. But if he is right, then things will continue in the subrosa way they’ve been for a couple of decades, normalized in all but name. Because there will be no Palestinian state in this generation — not after 10/7 and all that followed in both Palestinian territories.
Gazans return to ruined homes and severe water shortage
[IsraelTimes] A ceasefire has enabled some Gazans to go back to their ruined homes without fear of Israeli airstrikes, but they have returned to a severe water crisis.
“We returned here and found no pumps, no wells. We did not find buildings or houses,” says 50-year-old farmer Bassel Rajab, a resident of the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
“We came and set up tents to shelter in, but there is no water. We don’t have water, we are suffering.”
Drinking, cooking and washing are a luxury in Gaza, 16 months after the start of the war between Israel and the Hamas terror group.
Rajab says he sometimes walks 16 kilometers (10 miles) in the hope of taking a shower in Gaza City.
Some Palestinians have dug wells in areas near the sea, or rely on salty tap water from Gaza’s only aquifer, contaminated with seawater and sewage.
The Palestinian Water Authority estimates that it will cost $2.7 billion to repair the water and sanitation sectors.
Palestinians were already facing a severe water crisis as well as shortages of food, fuel and medicine before the wells were destroyed in the war.
The Palestinian Water Authority says in a statement on its website that 208 out of 306 wells had been knocked out of service during the war and a further 39 were partially out of service.
......who was simultaneously a very well paid Washington Post columnist and a long time propagandist for the Moslem Brotherhood and Al Qaeda — he died while on the 
...the collection of boodlers, grifters, hangers-on, and self-proclaimed 
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Fifteen of the nineteen WTC hijackers were Saudis, and most major jihadi commanders were Saudis, to include Osama bin Laden. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman quietly folded that tent in 2016, doing terrible things to the guys running it, and has since been dragging the kingdom into the current century...
...the collection of boodlers, grifters, hangers-on, and self-proclaimed 
...In 2020 Hezbollah blew up a considerable portion of Beirut and many of its inhabitants when its ammonium nitrate facility exploded. They blamed it on... somebody else. It wasn't them though. Trust them on that. And it ain't never coming to trial...
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Fifteen of the nineteen WTC hijackers were Saudis, and most major jihadi commanders were Saudis, to include Osama bin Laden. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman quietly folded that tent in 2016, doing terrible things to the guys running it, and has since been dragging the kingdom into the current century...
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Fifteen of the nineteen WTC hijackers were Saudis, and most major jihadi commanders were Saudis, to include Osama bin Laden. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman quietly folded that tent in 2016, doing terrible things to the guys running it, and has since been dragging the kingdom into the current century...