CAIRO: Israel's refusal to allow the free and safe entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza remains the main obstacle to progress in the ceasefire talks being held in Qatar, Palestinian sources said on Monday.
The two sources said mediators hosted one indirect round of ceasefire talks between the Palestinian group Hamas and Israeli officials earlier on Monday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday. Trump said on Sunday there was a good chance such a deal could be reached this week.
Meanwhile, a proposal seen by Reuters and bearing the name of a controversial US-backed aid group described a plan to build large-scale camps called "Humanitarian Transit Areas” inside - and possibly outside - Gaza to house the Palestinian population, outlining a vision of "replacing Hamas' control over the population in Gaza."
The $2 billion plan, created sometime after February 11 and carrying the name of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, was submitted to the Trump administration, according to two sources, one of whom said it was recently discussed in the White House.
The plan, reviewed by Reuters, describes the camps as "large-scale" and "voluntary" places where the Gazan population could "temporarily reside, deradicalise, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so.” The Washington Post made a reference to GHF's plans to build housing compounds for Palestinian non-combatants in May. A slide deck seen by Reuters goes into granular detail on the "Humanitarian Transit Zones," including how they would be implemented and what they would cost.
It calls for using the sprawling facilities to "gain trust with the local population" and to facilitate US President Donald Trump's "vision for Gaza."
Reuters could not independently determine the status of the plan, who created and submitted it, or whether it is still under consideration.
The aid group, responding to questions from Reuters, denied that it had submitted a proposal and said the slides "are not a GHF document." GHF said it had studied "a range of theoretical options to safely deliver aid in Gaza," but that it "is not planning for or implementing Humanitarian Transit Areas (HTAs)."
Rather, the organisation said it is solely focused on food distribution in Gaza.
On February 4, Trump first publicly said that the US should "take over" the war-battered enclave and rebuild it as "the Riviera of the Middle East" after resettling the population of 2.3 million Palestinians elsewhere. SEE ALSO P6
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