The quality incessantly attributed to US President Donald Trump is that he is a brilliant businessman. There are high hopes that his transactional characteristics will bring peace to a world on the brink of collapse. But in the case of Gaza, Trump appears perfectly content to abandon the “peace candidate” facade and instead embrace a neo-imperialist ethos, suggesting recently that the resolution to the ongoing genocide in Gaza is the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population and the installation of real estate developments intended to make Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
While forcibly displacing the Palestinians is an obviously absurd idea and would amount to a violation of international law, the notion that the Palestinian question will be settled after forcing their relocation is delusional beyond comprehension, especially considering Trump has stated that Palestinians would not have the right to return after Gaza was recovered and developed. In a recent interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Trump said:
“We’ll build beautiful communities for the 1.9 million people [Palestinians]. We’ll build beautiful communities. Safe communities. Could be five, six. Could be two, but we’ll build safe communities a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is. In the meantime, I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future…they [the Palestinians] wouldn’t [have the right to return] because they’re going to have much better housing, much better. In other words, I’m talking about building a permanent place for them. Because if they return now, it’ll be years before you could ever–it’s not habitable. It could be years before it could happen.”
After forcing the approximately 2.1 million Palestinians out of Gaza, Trump expects Jordan and Egypt to accept and resettle them in communities inside their respective countries, a proposal which Jordan and Egypt have both swiftly rejected. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has even considered canceling his visit to Washington D.C. “as long as the agenda includes U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza,” according to Egyptian sources.
Jordanian King Abdullah II was not so upset by Trump’s proposal to cancel his trip to the U.S., but he was visibly uncomfortable by Trump’s frankness and determination when discussing the matter, urging the public and other leaders not “to get ahead of” themselves without consulting the plans other nations before taking a concrete stance on next steps.
In truth, though, Jordan has made it clear such a plan is not realistic and that the photo-op with Trump is mainly an attempt to steer clear of possible economic repercussions – not to entertain lunacy. After the meeting, King Abdullah shared in a post on X that Jordan’s position “against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank” is “steadfast” and that “rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all.” He also emphasized that Jordan’s position “is the unified Arab position.” Abdullah clearly intends to send a message to Trump that his forceful, strongarm form of diplomacy might work with weaker countries like Colombia, but it is a completely different game in the Middle East.
If Trump and his cadres wish to maintain good relations with the Arab despots–whom Trump’s family, most notably Jared Kushner, surely cherish–then Trump should treat the Palestinian issue with a heightened sensitivity. Saudi Arabia, for example, has made it abundantly clear that Trump’s proposal is not welcome, with Prince Turki Al-Faisal describing it as a “fantasy” and a plan for “mad ethnic cleansing.”
Al-Faisal also makes another interesting point that many are finally beginning to come to terms with. The plan to secure Israel’s security by unleashing death and destruction on the population of Gaza was ill-fated to begin with and represents Israel’s massive failure since the beginning of its military operation. In fact, according to former Secretary of State Antony Blinken in January, Hamas has already replaced the fighters it has lost and remains alive and well as a military force. This means that Israel has completely “wiped” out a civilization in Gaza–to use Trump’s verbiage–and has still not achieved their military objective. As Blinken notes, Israeli strategy is fundamentally flawed:
“We’ve long made the point to the Israeli government that Hamas cannot be defeated by a military campaign alone, that without a clear alternative, a post-conflict plan and a credible political horizon for the Palestinians, Hamas, or something just as abhorrent and dangerous, will grow back,” and that’s “exactly what’s happened in northern Gaza since October 7. Each time Israel completes its military operations and pulls back Hamas, militants regroup and reemerge because there’s nothing else to fill the void…that is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war.”
And now, with the prospect of a complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza looming, the idea that displacing the Palestinians will result in lasting peace, as Trump claims it will, is not an argument worth taking seriously. It will gravely destabilize the countries around Israel and perpetuate the “enduring insurgency” that threatens Israel’s security and continues to keep the Palestinians oppressed in their own territory.
Even though Blinken was instrumental in provisioning the genocide against the Palestinians, he is correct in saying that improved relations between the warring parties start with the acknowledgment of the Palestinian right to self-determination and sovereign statehood. Presumably, a change in Israeli policy would also put pressure on the Palestinians to elect leadership capable of dealing politically with Israel and its allies so as to secure the security guarantees necessary for both people to live alongside each other in peace.
To the claim that such a plan is not acceptable, I simply respond: and ethnic cleansing is? To the claim that doing more of the same and expecting different results will fail over and over, I argue that more and more of the same thing is an already lopsided equation–that is, in terms of power between the Israelis and Palestinians. There is no parity between the two sides, and Israel has made it clear it can continue to punish the Palestinian population for as long as it can bear to be punished. Of course, this status quo cannot be maintained. It does not imply, however, that ethnic cleansing is the rational or logical consequence of such reasoning.
There is another pressing issue facing Trump and his hardliner Israeli allies who support his illegal proposition. Many of the Palestinians, and understandably so, will choose to leave – but many of them won’t. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been returning to what’s left of their homes, and are not eager to pick up again and leave.
What is Trump’s magic solution to this? Is continuing to bring “hell” upon Gaza, as he has promised in recent weeks really feasible anymore? Hasn’t Gaza endured enough? The world has viewed that policy play out over the last year, and if Trump is smart like his supporters claim he is, he will wisely steer clear of such disastrous actions. The only solution is to affirm Palestinians’ right to stay in Gaza if they choose to.
Even Secretary of State Marco Rubio mocked Trump on the Palestinian issue, telling him to his face that “the Palestinians are not a real estate deal.” But even if Rubio (being quite deluded himself) correctly understood Trump’s delusions on the fate of the Palestinians, he failed to alter Trump’s approach. Trump can’t go into Gaza and wave a wand to install hotels and casinos and expect coexistence.
Trump, a man of little to no principle, does not comprehend that to some people, their land, their heritage and their civilization (or what’s left of it) is far more important than the promises of American real estate moguls. They don’t want their land to look like southern France or Singapore; they want it to look like Gaza and to reflect their people, as it has for millennia, and for it not to be infringed upon by selfish imperialists who see nothing else in a society reduced to rubble but dollar signs. Gaza will obviously need to be redeveloped, as Israel has rendered it uninhabitable, but turning it from the Gaza Strip to the Vegas Strip–and doing so at the expense of the local population–is a non-starter.
As a fragile cease-fire continues to be together by the strength of a loose thread, it is important that the international community, especially those in the U.S., reiterate the firm commitment to international law and reject Trump’s ludicrous propositions. The older generations of Gazans still haven’t contemplated the loss of everything they have ever known, and the new generation struggles to fathom what comes next–to inflict more suffering on Gaza would leave a dark and permanent stain on not only the legacy of the Trump administration but on the already murky legacy of American foreign policy. Enough is enough. It is time to end the war and pursue a political solution that guarantees the inalienable rights of both sides. It is time to dismiss the delusions.
