A Top Biden Official Is Pushing An Alarming Plan For Gaza After The War

Top White House official Brett McGurk is quietly floating a controversial plan to reconstruct Gaza after Israel’s assault concludes, HuffPost has learned, despite serious concerns from some officials inside the administration that it would sow the seeds for future instability in the region.

In recent weeks, McGurk has been pitching national security officials on a plan suggesting an approximately 90-day timeline for what should happen once active fighting in Gaza ends, three U.S. officials said. It argues that stability can be achieved in the devastated Palestinian region if American, Israeli, Palestinian and Saudi officials launch an urgent diplomatic effort that prioritizes the establishment of Israel-Saudi ties, the officials continued. Such a development is widely referred to as “normalization,” given Saudi Arabia’s refusal to recognize Israel since its founding in 1948.

There is a widespread belief that similar U.S.-led deals that involved Israel and other regional Arab governments — and that downplayed Palestinian concerns — have fueled anger and violence, including the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and other Palestinian militants inside Israel.

Still, U.S. President to treat the kingdom as a “pariah.” McGurk previously worked on Middle East issues under Trump, who promoted his set of agreements between Arab states and Israel — the so-called Abraham Accords — as one of his biggest triumphs.

Regardless of whether his plan is feasible, the White House adviser and his team have a clear interest in trying to win support for it in terms of their influence within the government and over Biden, per the official focused on regional policy. “It’s for them to disprove the talking point that all the work McGurk has done on normalization is lost because of [Gaza] — there’s a lot of saving face,” the official said, describing the White House push for a U.S.-Saudi deal as “intensified.”

In his first public remarks after the Oct. 7 attack, McGurk claimed that he never sidelined Palestinian concerns in pursuing an Israel-Saudi agreement. Palestinians were “both a partner and at the center of the developing package deal,” he said. And on his latest visit to the region, earlier this week, Blinken explicitly discussed the potential deal, saying: “It would require the conflict to end in Gaza, and it would clearly require there be a practical pathway to a Palestinian state. … The interest is there. It’s real and it could be transformative.”

Outside experts and some American and foreign officials are extremely skeptical that the U.S. will be able to win real support for a Saudi-Israel agreement from Palestinians, given the community’s horror over the Gaza crisis and Washington’s reported focus on reengineering Palestinian leadership from the outside with help from Arab partners.

“There’s a lot of deja vu in what we’re hearing about the allegedly new thinking,” said Khaled Elgindy, an analyst at the Middle East Institute think tank and former adviser to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. “I have a hard time believing that the administration that misread the region for three years before Oct. 7 and certainly deprioritized the Palestinians … can understand Palestinian aspirations.”

“Even if they did understand what was required, would any Palestinian leader be willing to trust them after they have facilitated the annihilation of Gaza?” Elgindy added.

Biden administration officials are focused on bolstering the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of the West Bank and works closely with Israel and the U.S., although it has not controlled Gaza since 2007 and is led by officials whom many Palestinians disdain. McGurk’s plan calls for developing a new cabinet for the body, one U.S. official said, and Washington is widely understood to be attempting to loosen the hold of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

“When they talk about revitalized leadership, someone other than Mahmoud Abbas but very, very similar in almost every other way” — in terms of ties to Israel and the U.S. — “the echoes of 2002 and 2003 are quite loud because it was exactly that thinking: If we could just reengineer Palestinian politics to diminish [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat’s power, all would be well,” Elgindy said. Abbas became the Palestinian Authority’s first prime minister in 2003, before becoming its president in 2005 and since then intensely centralizing his own power.

Elgindy challenged the idea that the U.S. could seriously address Palestinian discontent by staffing the Palestinian Authority with more effective leaders, such as those seen as mostly focused on technical matters rather than politics like Salam Fayyad and Mohammad Mustafa. Technocratic experience “is important but what Palestinians are looking for is leadership. That is not Abbas; it is not these people,” he added. He envisions a figure who could have appeal across the spectrum of Palestinian politics, from the left to Hamas, but said that is “a disincentive for Israel” and that the U.S. would be “ambivalent” on the importance of that influence.

“They’re just going to fall back on simple power: We can control the flow of funds, we’re the only ones who can convince Israel to do anything. That’s been the modus operandi of the U.S.-led peace process all along, but look where it’s gotten us,” Elgindy said.

Blinken raised the idea of a new Palestinian Authority cabinet with Abbas this week and the Palestinian leader’s response was “poor,” a U.S. official told HuffPost. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller disputed that presentation in an email to HuffPost, writing, “This account is false in every respect.”

Beyond the McGurk gambit’s questionable chances of winning real Palestinian backing, the bid would likely face serious challenges on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers have repeatedly said their interest in helping Israel make friends in its neighborhood does not outweigh their concerns about what the U.S. would need to commit to in diplomacy for a Saudi-Israel pact — likely a binding American defense treaty with Saudi Arabia and U.S. assistance with a Saudi nuclear program, among other enticements. Congress would have to approve a treaty and could also scrutinize or bar other U.S.-Saudi deals.

Calling Saudi Arabia “an authoritarian regime which regularly undermines U.S. interests in the region, has a deeply concerning human rights record, and has pursued an aggressive and reckless foreign policy agenda,” 20 senators urged Biden in an Oct. 4 letter to tread carefully in pursuing a Saudi-Israel agreement.