Witkoff: Trump deal will usher in ‘renaissance’ for Gaza
"We are going to have housing, and mass transportation, and we're going to be able to clear and demolish all the areas there," said Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff.
Witkoff conversa con Trump en el US Open/ Charly Triballeau
U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the Gaza Strip will get the war-town coastal enclave “ready for a renaissance,” Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News‘ “My View with Lara Trump” last week.
“Who would ever have thought that we’d get to this place a year ago,” Witkoff told the president’s daughter-in-law, in an interview on the sidelines of Thursday’s Board of Peace meeting that aired Saturday.
The $17 billion raised by Board of Peace members for the reconstruction of Gaza “is going to jumpstart us,” he told Trump, adding: “We are going to have housing, and mass transportation, and we’re going to be able to clear and demolish all the areas there and get it ready for a renaissance.
“Today it’s 17 [billion dollars], tomorrow it could be 34,” according to the U.S. envoy.
As Donald Trump’s Board of Peace gathered in Washington on Thursday to chart a post-war future for the Strip, Hamas terrorists continued to systematically violate the ceasefire, and Israeli forces engaged in a relentless effort to dismantle entrenched terror infrastructure.
The president told the Board of Peace’s inaugural meeting he believes Hamas will lay down its weapons under his Gaza plan, warning the terrorist group will be “very harshly met” if they refuse to disarm.
“The war in Gaza is over,” the president stated. “Hamas has been, I think, they’re going to give up their weapons, which is what they promised. If they don’t, it’ll be, you know, they’ll be harshly met, very harshly met.”
Several top Hamas leaders, including Khaled Mashaal and Musa Abu Marzouk, have rejected key parts of the peace plan in recent weeks, including disarmament, despite having agreed to it in October.
A 5,000-man strong Palestinian force that will attempt to disarm Hamas is expected to deploy within 60 days, Ali Shaath, commissioner of the U.S.-backed civilian governing body, told the Board of Peace event.
Gaza High Representative Nickolay Mladenov, who spoke after Shaath, said the force will “ensure that all factions in Gaza are dismantled and all weapons are put under the control of one civilian authority.”
Mladenov stressed that reconstruction would only begin after the “demilitarization and decommissioning of all weapons in Gaza.”
Shaath’s National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) is tasked with “delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities” and designed to exclude Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, due to Israeli concerns about the P.A.’s support for terror.
However, Shaath, a former Palestinian Authority deputy minister, spoke at the Board of Peace on Thursday while wearing a pin on his lapel with the official flag of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a terror group long headed by Yasser Arafat, P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas’s protégé.
Meanwhile, Mladenov on Friday night announced he had established a liaison office with the P.A., saying it would provide a “formal, organized channel for communication and coordination” between the two bodies.
The liaison office will ensure “that communications can be received and conveyed through a clear institutional process” and that “all aspects of transitional administration, reconstruction, and redevelopment in the Gaza Strip are carried out with integrity and effectiveness,” he stated.
Mladenov’s announcement was welcomed by P.A. deputy chief Hussein al-Sheikh.
“We welcome the announcement by Mr. Nikolay Mladenov of the establishment of the Palestinian Authority’s liaison office, which will provide an official channel for coordination and communication between the Board of Peace’s Representative’s office and the Palestinian Authority to implement President Trump’s plan and Security Council Resolution 2803,” Abbas’s second-in-command wrote in a post on X.
Asked about last month about Hamas’s commitment to cede control to the NCAG, Abu Marzouk told Qatar’s Al Jazeera broadcaster that “nobody can enter Gaza without understandings with Hamas.
“If Hamas doesn’t agree to the administrative committee, it cannot enter the Gaza Strip,” he said, claiming to have veto power over its members.
“We had no objection to the people coming in, except for two. Through the mediators—especially the Egyptian mediator, our brothers in Egypt—we stated this clearly. One was removed from the committee, and the other was barred from crossing and will be replaced,” the terrorist said.
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