Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will be visiting Washington only after the emergency Arab summit, scheduled in Cairo on 27 February, has concluded, Egyptian sources confirmed to The New Arab’s Arabic language sister publication, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.
The delay in the visit would allow Egypt's vision for post-war Gaza and its reconstruction plan to be backed by support from across the region before meeting US President Donald Trump, the source said.
Earlier this week, reports suggested that Sisi was postponing the visit as long as Trump's plan to displace Palestinians and for the US to "own" Gaza was on the agenda.
Trump's comments, in which he suggested he would like to turn Gaza into a "Riviera of the Middle East" had inflamed tensions and made the already fragile ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel even more precarious.
Egyptian sources in Washington also said the US Department of Defence had been exerting pressure on Egypt over its rejection of Trump's plan, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported.
Pentagon officials reportedly threatened leaders in Egypt's military, suggesting they may disrupt military aid and supplies to the Egyptian army, including spare parts and maintenance for various weapons.
During a visit to Washington on Monday, Egypt's foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty conveyed to members of the US Congress that Egypt had categorically rejected Trump's plan.
He made clear that the rejection did not just come from the head of the establishment, but from various leadership levels including lower-ranking officers, and moving forward with such a plan would provoke a major crisis that could threaten the stability of Egypt as a whole.
Concerns were amplified by Egyptian Prime Minister Madbouly, who said in a press conference on Thursday that Gaza was Cairo's "main concern" at the moment, highlighting again Egypt's "complete rejection of the displacement of the Palestinian people from their land".
The emergency Arab summit to be held in Cairo later this month came after Abdelatty called several Arab states "in a bit to thwart the US proposal of displacing the Palestinian people," Egypt's foreign ministry announced in a statement earlier this week.
Abdelatty contacted his counterparts in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, Mauritania, Tunisia and Sudan, where he also discussed the ongoing Israeli offensive on the occupied West Bank.
Arab states and international figures have explicitly condemned Trump's plan over the last week.
The Arab League chief, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, decried the suggested displacement of Palestinians as "unacceptable for the Arab world, which has fought this idea for 100 years".
"We Arabs are not about to capitulate in any way now," he added, speaking at the Word Governments Summit in Dubai.
On Wednesday, both Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah II stressed the "unity" of their countries' positions on Gaza, calling for immediate reconstruction "without displacing the Palestinian people from their land".
The issue has brought the region, often plagued by geopolitical rivalries, together in a rare display of unity.
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