Opinion: Cairo summit: US-Israeli rejection of the Arab Gaza plan is a moment of truth

On Tuesday, Arab kings and presidents gathered in Cairo, summoned by the weight of history, drawn into a theatre where destinies could be decided - not just for Palestine, but for the very legitimacy of their own rule. 

This was not diplomacy as usual. It was not a routine summit lined with hollow statements and tired pledges. It was a reckoning, a moment where the Arab world stood before a mirror and asked itself: do we still possess the power to refuse, or have we been domesticated beyond salvation?

At the heart of the summit lay a scheme so monstrous it almost defies belief: the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, a final act of erasure seeking to transform the territory into a sanitised, tamed “Riviera” where the footprints of its true owners are scrubbed from the sand. 

The vision was born in the war rooms of Tel Aviv and blessed in the corridors of Washington, an audacious gambit to mould the ruins of Gaza into a pacified appendage of the Israeli state. But to make this fantasy a reality, one final condition is needed: Arab consent.

READ MORE: Cairo summit: US-Israeli rejection of the Arab Gaza plan is a moment of truth, opinion by Soumaya Ghannoushi