Arab states who were swift to reject President Donald Trump’s plan for the US to take control of Gaza and resettle its Palestinians are scrambling to agree on a diplomatic offensive to counter the idea, five sources told Reuters. Trump’s plan, announced on February 4 during a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, has infuriated the Palestinians and Arab countries and upended decades of US diplomacy focused on a two-state solution. But Arab states trying to devise an alternative plan have yet to tackle critical issues like who will foot the bill for Gaza’s reconstruction – estimated by the UN at more than $50 billion – or how the Strip will be governed, according to sources familiar with diplomatic discussions ahead of the meeting. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media. Leaders of Gulf Arab countries plus Egypt and Jordan are due to meet later on Friday in Riyadh for what Saudi Arabia said would be an unofficial meeting within the framework of “close brotherly relations”. Riyadh’s statement made no official mention of discussions about Gaza. But the sources told Reuters that the meet up, which was preceded by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s arrival on Thursday, was to discuss a mainly Egyptian proposal to counter Trump’s plan to “clean out” Palestinians from Gaza and resettle most of them in Jordan and Egypt. Cairo’s proposal could include up to $20 billion in funding over three years pledged mostly by wealthy Gulf and Arab states, but no commitments have been made clear yet, the sources said. “Details are not clear and there is confusion among stakeholders about what the plan contains,” one of the sources, an official involved in negotiations over Gaza told Reuters. A source close to Saudi Arabia’s royal court told Reuters that no proposal had been finalised ahead of Friday’s talks. It remains unclear if the Arab leaders will be able to reach a consensus on a unified alternative to Trump’s plan ahead of an emergency meeting of the Arab League set for March 4 in Cairo. Sisi called on Wednesday on the international community to adopt a plan to rebuild Gaza without displacing Palestinians. Palestinians and others in the region are concerned Trump’s proposal would destabilise the region, repeating the “Nakba”, or catastrophe in the 1948 war at the birth of the state of Israel. In a defining moment of pain for the Palestinians, almost 800,000 of them fled or were forced away from their homes and villages. Many were driven into refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where many of their descendants languish more than 75 years later. High stakes Palestinians say they face discriminatory treatment in some of those countries and frequently complain that they have been abandoned by Arab states. Arab states have repeatedly said they are doing their best to advance the Palestinian cause. Israeli PM Netanyahu says Hamas will pay for not returning Shiri Bibas The stakes are especially high for Egypt and Jordan. Sisi is concerned that if a large number of Palestinians moved to his country, they would include members of Hamas, which he sees as a security threat. Jordan, which contains a large Palestinian population, fears that the resettlement plan is a recipe for radicalism that will spread chaos through the Middle East, jeopardize the kingdom’s peace with Israel and even imperil the country’s survival. For the kingdom, Trump’s talk of resettling some two million Gazans comes dangerously close to its nightmare of a mass expulsion of Palestinians from both Gaza and the occupied West Bank – echoing a vision long propagated by right-wing Israelis of Jordan as an alternative Palestinian home. At the same time, countries like Egypt and Jordan are deeply dependent on US financial and military support and Gulf Arab countries need Washington for security. So they may not be in a position to take a tough stand against Trump.