At a borderline surreal press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump stunned the world by insisting the United States should “own” the Gaza Strip while the 2.2 million Palestinians living there should be permanently relocated outside of their homeland. The idea is not just a head scratcher. It’s entirely divorced from all aspects of Middle Eastern reality. And what it suggests about Trump and his attitude toward Israel, the Palestinians and their future is profoundly alarming.
Trump presented his territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing proposal as a humanitarian gesture of kindness toward the Palestinians, noting that they live in intolerable conditions. But the president did not acknowledge that this virtual hellscape is primarily an Israeli creation in two phases. First, the overwhelming majority, certainly well over 80%, of the Palestinians in Gaza are refugees from what became southern Israel in the 1947-1948 war. Second, Israel’s repeated wars in Gaza — especially the current conflict since the heinous Hamas-led massacre on Oct. 7, 2023 — have left the area in ruins.
The entire thrust of Trump’s approach is that of a Manhattan developer whose obstreperous tenants are in the way of a lucrative construction project.
On the evening of Oct. 7, Netanyahu promised “a mighty vengeance.” And that vow indeed has been fulfilled. Roughly 70% of standing structures in Gaza are damaged or destroyed. Virtually all the people of Gaza were displaced, most on multiple occasions, over the past year-and-a-half. Over 46,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them being civilians according to the United Nations’ human rights office, were killed in the Israeli onslaught. Almost the entire population lives in desperate food insecurity, with little or no reliable health care or education.Hamas and other militant groups obviously bear a great deal of blame for provoking the Israelis into a predictable, albeit inexcusable, overreaction. But the appalling crimes on Oct. 7 in no way indemnify Israel against responsibility for its horrendous assault against Gaza as a society. All of this was supported, funded and armed by the United States, which also protected Israel from criticism at the U.N. Security Council and similar international fora.
You’d never know any of this from listening to Trump. The only thing one could really conclude from this press conference is that the Palestinians in Gaza have incorrigibly mismanaged a beautiful piece of real estate. Indeed, the entire thrust of Trump’s approach is that of a Manhattan developer whose obstreperous tenants are in the way of a lucrative construction project and who simply must be relocated.
Not only would the United States “own” Gaza, Trump said, it would create a Middle Eastern “Riviera” there, populated by “international people” from around the world — perhaps including some Palestinians, he allowed. The Gaza Palestinians, meanwhile, would be expelled to Egypt and Jordan. That these people, already refugees, are clinging on to one of the last toeholds of their own country, or that they have attachments to Palestine, appears irrelevant.Trump is certainly setting the stage for condemning the Palestinians as ungrateful wretches who refused a marvelous opportunity to “live out their lives in peace and harmony” elsewhere. It is, of course, all absurd fantasy. There is no way to settle hundreds of thousands of unwilling Palestinians to Jordan. And there is no chance that Egypt will change its opposition to relocating of large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza into their land, a policy that dates back to the early 1950s. We may be on the cusp of radically new American policies. This isn’t going to happen, and Trump undoubtedly knows that. But he may have been burying the lede. In response to a journalist’s question, Trump said that the United States would be making an announcement regarding Israel’s pending claims of sovereignty in the occupied West Bank in “three or four weeks.” This is a startling and ominous announcement.While what Trump is saying about Gaza may be a supercilious pipe dream, it could nonetheless be signaling a very concrete and potentially disastrous change of U.S. policy: the announcement that Washington endorses sweeping Israeli land claims in the occupied West Bank. Last fall, several ministers in the Israeli government reacted to Trump’s election victory by saying that now is the time to annex all or much of the West Bank. Such a move was anticipated in Trump’s January 2020 “Peace to Prosperity“ proposal. We may be on the cusp of radically new American policies: not just a fake one regarding Gaza, but a very real one regarding the West Bank. Most of Trump’s words Tuesday were effectively gibberish, yet behind them may lie a very sinister, and very real, final U.S. assault on the last hopes of Palestinian national rights, independence and self-determination in their own country. And Trump undoubtedly will market it all as in the interests of humanity, peace and, above all, the Palestinians themselves.
Hussein Ibish
Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. 
