Less than two weeks after the fighting between Israel and Gaza terrorists ended, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi reportedly presented an ambitious and generous solution to the quarrel between the sides: a Palestinian state in Sinai.
According to a report on Army Radio on Monday, Egypt has been working on the plan for several weeks, and presented it to Abbas in Cairo over the weekend. The plan involves transferring 1,600 square kilometers (620 square miles) to the Palestinian Authority, for the purpose of establishing a Palestinian state.
At its core, the Egyptian initiative proposes expanding the Gaza Strip to five times its current size and settling all the Palestinian refugees in a state to be established there. Under the initiative, this state will be demilitarized, Army Radio reported.
In addition, the report continued, the Palestinian Authority would be granted autonomy in the Palestinian cities in the West Bank in exchange for relinquishing the Palestinian demand to return to 1967 borders.
According to sources privy to the details of the proposal, Abbas has rejected the initiative despite substantial Egyptian pressure to accept it.
The U.S. was involved and even greenlighted the initiative, Army Radio reported, adding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also brought into the loop, but did not brief the cabinet on it.
A similar idea was floated some eight years ago by Israeli academics, but it was rejected outright by the regime of then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Experts surmise that Sissi's generous offer stems from Egypt's current difficulty in controlling terrorist groups based in the Sinai Peninsula.