Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said Sunday that his country’s Gaza reconstruction plan, which would ensure that the Palestinian population remains in the Strip, is ready and will be presented to an emergency Arab summit on March 4.

Arab states that were swift to reject US President Donald Trump’s plan for the US to take control of Gaza and resettle Palestinians are scrambling to agree on a diplomatic offensive to counter the idea.

Trump’s plan, announced on February 4 during a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, has infuriated Palestinians and Arab countries and upended decades of US diplomacy that envisioned the Gaza Strip as part of a future Palestinian state under a two-state solution.

The Egyptian counter-plan, according to Abdelatty, will not be purely Egyptian or Arab but will seek international support and funding to ensure its successful implementation.

“We will hold intensive talks with major donor countries once the plan is adopted at the upcoming Arab summit,” Abdelatty said in a press conference with European Union Commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Šuica.

Abdelatty said Europe’s role, especially in the economic aspect of rebuilding the war-torn enclave, is critical.

Asked about the ceasefire deal, whose first phase ended last week, Abdelatty said Egypt will continue its intensive efforts to ensure the truce is maintained and negotiations for its second phase can begin.

He stressed the importance of safely executing the ceasefire agreement signed in January, emphasizing Egypt’s commitment to ensuring its proper implementation.

“The first phase has concluded successfully, and now we must shift to discussions on the second phase, which is key to sustaining the ceasefire,” he said. “Naturally, it will be difficult, but with goodwill and political determination, it can be achieved.”

The fate of the ceasefire was thrown into confusion on Sunday as its first phase came to an end.

Abdelatty said that following the emergency Arab summit, there will be an urgent ministerial meeting in Saudi Arabia of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, where foreign ministers will push for the summit’s outcomes to be presented globally.

“We will ensure that the results of the Arab summit are presented to the world in the best possible way,” he said.

The three-stage ceasefire agreement, reached last month, halted some 15 months of fighting triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, when thousands of terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.

The deal requires Hamas to release all the hostages, Israel to release thousands of Palestinian security prisoners — including hundreds serving life sentences — and a halt to fighting in the Strip, followed by negotiations for a “sustainable calm” and IDF withdrawal from the enclave.

The first stage, though plagued by missteps, ended Saturday, having achieved its targets. Talks on the second phase, during which additional hostages would be released and Israel would fully withdraw from Gaza, were meant to begin on day 16 of the 42-day first phase. However, Israel has not engaged in mediated talks with Hamas on the topic.

Then, on Sunday, Israel said it would not allow any more goods to enter Gaza over what it called Hamas’s refusal to accept a proposal to extend the expiring initial stage of the ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said the move had rock-solid backing from Trump’s White House.

Hamas rejected the new proposal and lashed out against Israel for cutting off aid, calling it “cheap extortion, a war crime and a blatant attack on the [hostage-ceasefire] agreement.”

Both sides stopped short of saying the ceasefire had ended.

Abdelatty on Sunday called for total compliance with the Gaza ceasefire deal, urging both Israel and Hamas to honor their commitments.

“There is no alternative to the faithful and full implementation by all parties of what was signed last January,” Abdelatty said.

Even before the ceasefire was signed, Netanyahu came under pressure from the far-right flank of his coalition to continue the war. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has threatened to pull his Religious Zionism party from the government if his demand to resume the war after the first stage is not met, which would eliminate Netanyahu’s parliamentary majority.