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Trump – for all his seeming simple-mindedness – may have manifested the art of the deal through his Gaza proposal.
By DAN PERRY FEBRUARY 9, 2025 00:55
Displaced Palestinians make their way back to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip on January 27, 2025
(photo credit: Ali Hassan/Flash90)
From the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there have been Jews who wished the Arabs simply weren’t here, and very much also vice versa.
You didn’t need to be a crazy nationalist on either side to think that – even many regular people felt the land was too small for two very different equally stiff-necked peoples.
Yet only crazies actually thought expulsions were a good idea.
Partitioning the Holy Land into two states or a single binational state – whether or not it featured equal rights – seemed to be the only real alternatives, and that remains the case.
Into this complex reality and nuanced societal psychology now blunders US President Donald Trump with a half-baked plan to displace the two million Gazans while the United States takes over the strip and builds “magnificent” resorts there – for whom exactly, it is not clear.
If one were to take Trump’s comments, Tuesday, at the White House seriously, there are many questions to be asked.
Trump wants the ceasefire deal implemented to the end so that the hostages return, which means that Hamas will stay for now as Israeli forces leave the Gaza Strip – so is this carte blanche for Israel to afterward resume the war to finish off Hamas?
Does he want US Marines to be fighting Hamas in Jabalya instead? Does he expect the Arab world to persuade Hamas to leave?
Would Palestinians in any way be coerced to relocate? Would leavers be allowed to return?
On the other hand, there’s probably no need to try to dissect any of this too much – because the proposal, if one can call it that, is a dead letter.
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Some Arab states have vehemently rejected it and so has the Palestinian leadership, which is no surprise – because fanatically fervent attachment to Palestine is their defining national ethos.
There are Palestinians still walking around with keys from long-destroyed homes from 1948 – long after Pakistanis and Indians and Germans, by the many millions, have accepted their displacement around the same time.
Moreover, the American people will not put up with another Middle East military quagmire in order to indulge Trump’s fantasies; Trump himself surely doesn’t want one.
MORE LIKELY, if there is any strategy at all, it is a dual one – and it may not be so stupid.
In the short term, this probably resolves Netanyahu’s coalition troubles; the far Right, whose greatest expulsionist fantasies have been breathtakingly indulged, now has its excuse to remain in the government a bit longer even if the war ends and Hamas remains, for the moment.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – one of the luckiest politicians I have seen – may actually survive in office until 2026; that, I do believe, is this man’s main concern.
Trump's possible success through his proposal
And on another, more interesting level, by setting the bar of madness so high, Trump may have succeeded in priming the players for what really needs to happen, and actually can. And that is this:
First, Arab states, including Qatar, where the US has leverage, must pressure Hamas to step aside as a condition for delivering the tens of billions in aid for the near-total reconstruction of Gaza, and they must message this in a way that creates Palestinian support: Gaza can stew in its juices with Hamas, or be truly transformed, this time for real, without Hamas – you choose.
Palestinian public opinion can be frustratingly myopic – but it will start to shift and this would have a potentially game-changing impact. This requires persuading the moderate Arab states to finally not be useless, and stop indulging maximalist Palestinian fantasies.
Second, a civilian government of technocrats should be set up in Gaza, which has ties to the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority but is also credibly different and can provide a less corrupt and dysfunctional example.
It must work in tandem with Egypt and the Gulf states, with quiet Western backing, to establish a proper administration that might provide a credible pathway to future independence.
Third, the Arab nations and possibly the West need to agree to send security forces into Gaza to help the new authorities.
The Hamas leadership and any armed men might need to be offered exile — that is the population transfer that needs to happen.
WHERE TRUMP is right is that people should not be effectively jailed in Gaza, since he place really is quite unlivable.
Even before the war, conditions were dire: Hamas rule had left the population impoverished and increasingly indoctrinated, and Gaza’s density made it a pressure cooker of despair.
I supervised AP’s Gaza bureau for years, and many of my friends and colleagues there would have been happy to move elsewhere – indeed, as I and many of the readers have moved around the world, they were, unfairly and idiotically, mostly blocked from doing so – including by Israel – .
Now, after more than a year of war, the destruction is staggering. A majority of buildings have been damaged, and the idea of rebuilding under Hamas is, basically, as fantastical as the expulsion idea.
Gazans who genuinely want to leave should indeed be freely welcomed in various countries and certainly allowed to move to the West Bank.
Critically, anyone who leaves must receive a rock-solid guarantee that they can go back at a time of their choosing. Israel should be compelled to offer assurances that it will place no obstacles in their way.
The question, ultimately, is how to ensure that any such relocations would be voluntary.
If aid is withheld until they leave and without a right to return – it’s easy to see the Netanyahu government trying to engineer such a scenario – the outcome would be widely seen as an ethnic cleansing.
That is a war crime that would further complicate Israel’s legal situation long after Trump is gone.
This is a delicate balance.
Rage in response to Palestinian displacement
RAGE OVER Palestinian displacement is deeply rooted in their history: The 1948 War of Independence [begun by Egypt, Transjordan, and Syria attacking the newly declared Jewish state] displaced over 600,000 Arabs, shaping their collective identity ever since and basically forging the Palestinian sense of nationhood.
This has been perpetuated by UNRWA, a United Nations agency that exists solely for this group and that sustains dependency in a bizarre hereditary refugee status – and by Arab states that historically refused to grant Palestinians full citizenship.
Trump’s proposal adds a new layer to this volatile reality. And yet, if it indirectly moves regional players toward a realistic postwar arrangement, it may have served a purpose. The real issue, then, is compelling the Arab states to put the squeeze on Hamas.
Here, I see a parallel to the 2020 Abraham Accords. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had previously conditioned peace on he establishment of a Palestinian state but eventually sufficed with Israel backing down from its threat to annex parts of the West Bank.
Similarly, the shock of the US president actually proposing the depopulation of Gaza could be a game-changer that moves the Saudis and others to lower their price, make peace with Israel, and do what is needed to help the Palestinians in a real way.
That means withdrawing every last remaining ounce of legitimacy that the Arab states have accorded Hamas in what has been a massive regional psychosis of cowardice and dishonesty.
If that is the outcome, then Trump – for all his seeming simple-mindedness – will have manifested the art of the deal.
The writer is the former chief editor of the Associated Press in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books about Israel. Follow him at danperry.substack.com
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