Everyone who claims to be an “expert” on the Middle East is sure about one thing: President Donald Trump’s proposal to move Palestinian Arabs out of Gaza either cannot or should not happen. Of course, the same experts said the same thing about the 2020 Abraham Accords that achieved normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab and Muslim-majority countries. They also predicted that Trump’s moving of the US embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would set off Armageddon (it did not).
So, when faced with a choice between an “impossible” Trump idea and conventional wisdom from the foreign-policy establishment, perhaps it might be smart for some of those “experts” to pump the brakes on their apocalyptic warnings.
Nevertheless, they might be right this time—and at first glance, it’s hard to see how Trump’s idea can be put into effect without massive use of US military force and equally massive expenditure of federal funds. And we already know that the administration has no intention of sending troops to Gaza or investing much, if any, money in the idea
Even if it doesn’t happen, Trump’s decision to champion the idea is enormously consequential. It decisively changes the conversation about the Middle East in a way that dwarfs the importance of even the most significant pro-Israel policy moves of his first term. Above all else, it means the end of the fantasy about the creation of a Palestinian state.
The international community, Arab and Muslim worlds, and the Palestinians themselves are outraged about the idea of a reconstruction plan for Gaza that would allow any people to leave the Strip. They are not appalled by it because they think it would be bad for Gaza civilians. Say what you like about Trump and his intentions or even those of Israelis and pro-Israel Americans who cheered his words, but it’s clear that it would be good for the Palestinian Arabs who have been stuck there to be given a fresh start somewhere else. And it would make it a lot more likely that the rebuilding of Gaza would not mean the reconstruction of Hamas terror fortifications and tunnels, as opposed to making it more livable or even developing its beachfront property.
It’s a nonstarter because all of these groups are still holding on to the idea that it must be preserved as a bastion of anti-Zionist irredentism. In their minds, Gaza’s only purpose is to serve, along with Judea and Samaria, and some of Jerusalem, as parts of an independent Palestinian state that they still believe must be set up next to Israel.
Nothing can be allowed to interfere with that failed idea. Not the Palestinians’ repeated rejection of two-state solutions dating back to the 1947 U.N. partition plan for the then-British Mandate for Palestine. Not their repeated refusals of peace plans or anything that might compel them to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders can be drawn. Not the clear intention of the genocidal Hamas terrorists who ran Gaza as an independent Palestinian state in all but name from 2007 until Oct. 6. 2023 to destroy the Jewish state and its people. And not the fact that the supposedly more moderate Palestinian Authority and Palestinian public opinion, in general, approve of Hamas and its goals, for which the barbaric atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, were just the trailer.
None of this prevented the international community, in addition to every American administration until Trump 2.0, from holding onto the belief that a Palestinian state was the way to end the conflict. A Palestinian state was an integral part of the first Trump administration’s “Peace Through Prosperity” Mideast plan, though it was appropriately far less generous than previous offers. And even after Oct. 7, former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were among those who pretended that the last century of Palestinian Arab intransigence was meaningless and no reason to stop pushing for the same idea that had failed time and again.
The genius of Trump’s Gaza rebuilding proposal is not so much the simple logic of offering people the chance given to other refugee populations or anyone else in an area destroyed by war a new life elsewhere. And the key point is not wailing about its infeasibility or alleged violation of international law. Nor the fact that it is not in the interests of the United States or Israel to force the shaky regimes in Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians who are likely to want to overthrow those governments, and replace them with Hamas or allies like the Muslim Brotherhood.
The centerpiece of this project is its clear assumption that there will never be an independent Palestinian state in Gaza or elsewhere.
Gaza has been a dagger pointed at Israel ever since it withdrew every soldier, settler and settlement from the Strip in the summer of 2005; two years later, PA rule (also run by its political party, Fatah) was toppled by Hamas in a bloody coup against its rivals.
Still, it remains an article of faith among the foreign-policy establishment that Israel must be compelled to facilitate the creation of a state—a state whose main purpose will serve, like Gaza under Hamas, as a springboard for Israel’s eventual destruction.
What Trump has done is to serve notice that the United States will no longer regard the facilitating of this destructive concept as a policy goal. On the contrary, he has made it clear that whatever else does or doesn’t happen in the coming years, a different solution has to be found for the Palestinians. The people who cheered the orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction on Oct. 7 will not be rewarded for this with more pressure on Jerusalem to do something the overwhelming majority of Israelis from right to left oppose as not so much unwise as suicidal.
4 comments:
Scott, it sounds like the Palestinians are sort of effete? Why would Israel sign a covenant with the antichrist? In other words, what state would Israel be in for them to be forced into signing an agreement? I looked, and looked but could not find anything...just that they will sign an agreement...but why?Thanks Scott!
Who knows....It was always assumed (by many) that it would be in the aftermath of Gog-Magog but IMO and Hitchcock we have to consider that Gog-Magog could happen very early just after the Trib begins...Look at how many unexpected things have developed in just the last few months - there is simply no telling what that will look like at the time of the confirmation of the covenant
Thanks Scott
Best guess - rapture ignition switch. Psalm 83 which includes Egypt and Jordan the internal combustion followed by emergence of 666 who negotiates the end to the war guaranteeing Israel 7 years of peace (Daniel 9:27). Rebuilding the temple and two-state solution not part of the agreement.
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