In the long term, Prince Mohammed is unlikely to be successful for two reasons.

First, Israel will prove a major obstacle, given that Benjamin Netanyahu unequivocally refuses to accept Palestinian statehood and sovereignty.

Second, an alternative plan that completely sidelines Hamas has very little chance of succeeding.

The political organisation may give up governance in Gaza in return for reconstruction, but it will not simply vanish.

Unlike in 1982, when the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) under Yasser Arafat was pushed out of Lebanon to Tunisia after the Israeli occupation of the south of the country, Hamas is fighting on its own land.

The subsequent Lebanese Christian massacre of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila after the departure of the PLO is still alive in Palestinian memory.

Hamas will not accept any plan that will bring about an end to Palestine as it is imagined by several generations of Palestinian exiles around the world and the people of Gaza who endured more than 16 months of slaughter.

The Saudi alternative plan is driven by pure self-interest, namely, to mitigate against the destabilisation of several Arab regimes, itself included.

Forced eviction of Palestinians will inevitably spread Hamas, its fighters and political Islam – mainly the Muslim Brotherhood – into countries that have been deliberately and successfully suppressing such ideology.

None of the Arab regimes want to see Hamas fighters and their extended communities living in their countries.