Trump’s Gaza Bombshell

By Philip Klein

Tuesday, February 04, 2024

 

President Trump has developed a reputation for zigging when everybody else says it’s time to zag. But when it comes to the plan he just outlined for Gaza, it’s more like one side is zigging, another is zagging, and he just busted into the White House East Room and shouted “hippopotamus!”

 

It’s hard to think of any other way to convey the sense in which Trump has upended decades of discussions about the Arab–Israeli conflict.

 

A few weeks ago, it seemed like it may have been one of Trump’s many offhanded musings that would be quickly forgotten when he floated the possibility of moving the roughly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt or Jordan. But today, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting, Trump raised the idea again. Many times, in fact. He explained that he believes that Palestinians would welcome the opportunity to leave the hellish Gaza, which is no longer habitable, to move to new communities that would be built in other countries with money that would be donated by wealthy states in the region. Even though Egypt and Jordan insist they won’t welcome Gazans, Trump says they will.

 

But Trump saved his most unexpected proposal for Gaza until his evening joint press conference with Netanyahu.

 

“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too,” Trump declared. “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out.”

 

When asked directly, Trump signaled that he would be open to the presence of U.S. troops in the region if necessary.

 

Discussing the future of Gaza, he described it more like a real estate opportunity for the U.S., as he sees waterfront property with lots of potential just waiting for the right developer to come in and rebuild it. Asked who would live there, he described how it would be a sort of international zone where anybody would be free to live.

 

If there were any doubt as to whether this was a deliberate proposal of Trump’s, his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, posted a meme with the famous Albert Einstein quote about insanity, echoing Trump, who had repeatedly pointed out that everything that has been tried in the past in Gaza has not worked. Trump’s team is using this as another example of Trump breaking with the failed elite consensus.

 

However, the most fundamental flaw of the proposal is the assumption that the Palestinian population primarily is interested in living in a peaceful and prosperous place somewhere else. In reality, Palestinians are largely supportive of Hamas terrorism, they see Gaza as their homeland, and they don’t think Israel should exist. They will not want to leave. And other Arab countries won’t want to take them precisely because they know that it would mean importing a terrorism problem.

 

As far as the second part of Trump’s Gaza plan, there would be no real authority for the U.S. to swoop in and claim ownership in Gaza. And for a president who campaigned on putting an end to endless wars and disentangling from foreign interventions, it would be bizarre to send troops to help create some sort of American economic outpost in one of the most dangerous hot spots in the world.

 

We don’t know what the ultimate play will be here. It’s quite possible, as has happened in the past, that Trump is saying something outrageous to shake things up and freak everybody out, and then he will ultimately be open to pursuing more conventional ends. That said, we should be clear that Trump’s plan for Gaza as he outlined it tonight is not going to happen.