Did Muslim countries agree to a different version of Trump’s Gaza plan? Here’s what we know

Did Muslim countries agree to a different version of Trump’s Gaza plan?

When the Gaza plan was first floated, a bunch of Muslim and Arab governments think Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Turkey signaled they were on board. Publicly, they welcomed the idea and said they were willing to work with it. Some even presented it as a big step forward, partly because the draft they saw did not give Israel a free pass on annexing the West Bank. Pakistan, for instance, initially said it was backing Trump “100 percent,” only to walk that back a bit later, saying the plan was not actually their document. That kind of hedging tells you they were not totally comfortable.

The messy part is what came next. Axios and a few other outlets reported that the plan Hamas was handed isn’t the same version Muslim leaders had nodded along to. The story goes that Netanyahu stepped in and pushed through some late changes, the sort that tilted things further toward Israel’s security demands. So, for example, where the earlier draft apparently had a clearer timeline for Israeli withdrawal and softer language on Hamas disarming, the new one makes those conditions tougher and more open-ended.

That has left some Arab and Muslim officials frustrated. Qatar and Pakistan, in particular, hinted that what was released by the White House doesn’t match what they had signed off on. They are being diplomatic about it, but the subtext is clear that they feel sidelined.

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The tricky part is that no one outside those closed-door talks has actually seen the original text. So we’re left piecing things together from leaks and carefully worded statements. Did the US deliberately change the deal after it got Arab backing? Or did these countries know about the edits and just didn’t like how they looked in public? Hard to say.

Meanwhile, Hamas is still studying the proposal. They’ve said they’re open to looking at it “in good faith,” but they have issues with the disarmament demands. And until Hamas decides, the rest of this is just diplomatic noise.

So, it does look like Muslim countries thought they were backing one version of Trump’s Gaza plan, and the final product ended up looking different probably after Israel’s lobbying. But since we don’t have the draft they agreed to, no one outside the negotiating rooms can prove exactly how much was changed.