Donald Trump stunned the world, and especially the Middle East, by suggesting that the United States should “own” the Gaza Strip. He thinks that the 2.2 million Palestinians living there—he misrepresented the figure as 1.8 million—should be expelled somewhere else, probably Egypt and/or Jordan. During his press conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on February 5, he went on to explain that wealthy Arab states in the Gulf would pay for this ethnic cleansing and that the United States would then develop Gaza into a Mediterranean “Riviera” with lots of wonderful jobs for the people living there. Those would be “international people” from around the world, for some reason, and, he would allow, possibly some Palestinians as well. Or not. 

The whole proposal was so bizarre and divorced from reality that a grinning Netanyahu, standing next to him at the press conference, was careful not to endorse the plan merely saying Trump was thinking “outside the box” and that this should be carefully considered and studied. But he knew that any direct endorsement would make him look as ridiculous as the U.S. president and the Israeli prime minister does not wield the power of the White House to indemnify the occupant from charges of absurdity or lunacy.

This bizarro world solution for the Middle East isn’t going to happen. There is no appetite around the globe for accepting millions of Palestinians from Gaza. There is no way for Jordan—even if it were willing to accept still more Palestinian refugees than those already living there—to receive hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza. There is no way to get them from Gaza to Jordan, short of outlandish round-the-clock air lifts or some sort of forced death march through the Negev desert. The only location that makes any practical sense is Egypt, but Cairo is not going to accept the transfer of significant numbers of Palestinians from Gaza into Sinai or anywhere else in their country. This is a policy that dates back to the era of King Farouk, when in 1951 or 1952 it was decided to absolutely not allow the transfer of Palestinians into Egypt from Gaza. There is virtually nothing the United States can offer Egypt (within the realm of reality) that would induce Cairo to change this policy; withholding the current military aid package would certainly not be sufficient to produce that result.

Real Estate Dreams

It’s likely that, at a certain register, Trump knows this. While he may harbor dreams of Gaza as a major real estate development program—as described by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who previously waxed eloquent about the potential for beachfront property development in this gorgeous part of the Mediterranean coast—Trump probably knows this isn’t going to happen. And he knows there is no practical means for the United States to take “ownership” of this territory, which Israel covets but has been unable to successfully introject or annex in any way since 1967. The Gaza Strip is effectively considered part of the nonmember observer state of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly. That is why the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court have asserted jurisdiction over crimes in and coming out of Gaza, as a presumptive part of the nonmember observer state at the UN. 

Moreover, Trump hasn’t consulted any Palestinians, and he is certainly aware of that. It’s not just Hamas that has angrily rejected his suggestion, but also the U.S.-aligned Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization, and, by every account, virtually anyone who can give comment to journalists on the ground in Gaza. For Palestinians, this proposal is a new and (demographically at least) larger version of the Nakba, or catastrophe, that happened in 1947-48, including not merely the displacement of about 800,000 Palestinians from what became the state of Israel but also the destruction, in a matter of months, of a large and vibrant Arab society and its replacement with a Jewish majority through force of arms. In this case, the depopulation of Gaza would not be as historically determinative as the 1948, or even 1967, ethnic cleansings, but it would be easily the largest removal of Palestinians from Palestine on behalf of Israel in the history of the conflict.

Trump’s press secretary and other officials have tried to walk his comments back by suggesting that Palestinian displacement from Gaza would be temporary and that they would be welcome to return at some future date. But Palestinians and all those familiar with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict know that Israel has never allowed any significant return of Palestinians to what they consider “Eretz Israel” (the land of Israel), which by almost all considerations includes Gaza, since the 1940s. Israel is no more likely to change this policy than Egypt regarding Palestinian displacement. Once they’re removed from Gaza, the Palestinians, and everybody else possibly other than the Trump administration, knows they are never coming back. It is this realization that keeps the Palestinians put in Gaza, miserable as it is and has become in large part thanks to U.S policies, as well as Israel’s vicious war of vengeance and Hamas’ reckless cynicism and brutality. And because of that, Palestinians would have to be physically forced, at literal gunpoint, to abandon the Gaza Strip. It’s essentially a non-sequitur.

So, why is Trump saying these things that he knows, at least at a certain register, are absurd? Here are a few possibilities, ranging from the least to the most likely, significant and ominous.

Domestic Consumption?

First, it’s possible he’s using all of this as a method of diverting attention, particularly in the United States and from the media, away from the flurry of executive orders and preposterous (some would argue dangerous) cabinet appointments. In the three weeks since his inauguration, the U.S president has flooded the zone within Washington in an effort to change the government, at a fundamental level, in short order before the midterm elections loom and his lame-duck status becomes clear to everybody. 

Rarely has a president moved at such warp speed, and never has one attempted to replace the apolitical administrative state with a personalized and apparently autocratic structure. He’s beginning with a massive ideological purge of the FBI, efforts to wipe out USAID, and to fire everybody involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programs, even if they were assigned to those positions as part of their jobs. So, he may be simply using bizarre statements about Gaza to occupy headlines with something else other than his own dangerous machinations inside Washington. It’s definitely a possible scenario.

Second, he may be attempting to strong-arm various Arab parties. It could be a message to Hamas to cooperate with the second phase of the ceasefire that he has compelled Netanyahu to accept, although Hamas appears enthusiastic about that anyway. His real challenge is to get Netanyahu to go along with the second phase. But he may be calculating that this kind of threat, framed as a humanitarian gesture of kindness and empathy, will shock Palestinians into cooperating with the United States and with Israel on Gaza. You want to be recalcitrant about anything, including hostages? Well, we can always threaten to expel each and every one of you from your country, never to see it again. How do you like that? This is possible, but the problem is that threatening Palestinians in Gaza after everything they’ve been through for the past year-and-a-half is a little empty. The United States says it will be “more violent” if there is any hitch in releasing hostages. More violent how? The threat is empty, and both Trump and Hamas know this. Maybe he is calculating that the fear of catastrophe number three, the third displacement of Palestinians after 1947-48 and 1967 could be so terrifying and plausible that this will shake either Hamas or the people of Gaza into compliance.

Third, this could be some sort of ploy designed to pressure Saudi Arabia to reduce the price it is asking Israel to pay for normalization of ties in exchange for a new mutual defense treaty with the United States and a strategic alliance agreement, among other things. Certainly, Israel is not going to agree to commit to the creation of a Palestinian state in almost all of the occupied territories with its capital in occupied East Jerusalem. That’s the current Saudi position. The U.S. task is to convince the Saudis to reduce their demands while increasing the price Israel is willing to pay on the Palestinians to facilitate a tripartite agreement that involves Saudi recognition of Israel and a new U.S. defense treaty with Riyadh. The sweet spot could be that Israel recognizes, for the first time in its history, the Palestinian right to a state in British Mandate Palestine—that is to say between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea—but without committing to any of its boundaries or sovereign prerogatives and restrictions. All of that would be left to future negotiations with the PLO. But Israel would have to end the Gaza war formally, recognize this right, and undertake to enter into a negotiating process in order to establish such a state. That could be enough for Saudi Arabia, even if the Palestinians complain bitterly about betrayal and so on.

The problem for Trump is that Israel is highly unlikely, under its current government or any other plausible administration, to agree to recognize the Palestinian right to a state anywhere in what they consider “Eretz Israel.” This was true before October 7, 2023, and is even more of a governing consensus everywhere except the solidly left of the Israeli political spectrum. No one even near the political center is willing to contemplate Palestinian sovereignty in historical Palestine. Trump may be calculating that these sort of wild suggestions about Gaza, which undoubtedly please the Israeli right, will buy him credit and brownie points to pressure the Israelis in the future to be more forthcoming on the West Bank and allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, surrounded by a greater Israel; this is the mainstay of his January 2020 “peace” proposal entitled “Peace to Prosperity”. 

That plan proposed that Israel would annex an additional 30% of the remaining West Bank, at least, leaving a rump Palestinian entity entirely surrounded in a new, formalized greater Israel, much as Lesotho is surrounded by South Africa. The plan pleased neither Palestinians, who want a real state, nor Israelis, who want no hint of a Palestinian state at all. Trump may be planning to return to this model, but with Gaza left out so that there is no question of a safe passage zone through Israel for Palestinians between Gaza and this rump West Bank bantustan. If so, wild talk about de-populating the Gaza Strip may be designed to soften the blow to Palestinians when Gaza is not included in this Lesotho-like phony statelet in the West Bank. Trump may try to foist on Israelis and Palestinians alike in the name of a “two-state solution.”

The Shifting Sands

But fourth, and most likely, Trump is preparing the groundwork for a major new shift in U.S. policy toward Israel’s putative land claims in the occupied West Bank. Since October 7, the consensus in Israel in favor of annexation in the West Bank has grown enormously, and now may well include Netanyahu. Previously, Netanyahu probably regarded formal annexation as a job for his successor. But now, following his vow on the evening of October 7 of “a mighty vengeance” for the Hamas-led massacre, he may feel that the job is actually his, the crowning glory of a long and storied career as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister—the slayer of any prospect of a Palestinian state, and the father of Greater Israel. Most coverage of the Trump-Netanyahu press conference failed to even note what is probably the most important thing the U.S. president said: that his administration would have an important announcement regarding Washington’s policy toward Israeli land claims in the occupied West Bank in about four weeks. That is chilling and ominous, as it suggests a likely major change of policy. Otherwise, what is there to say?

Why would Trump be doing this? He hinted broadly at the answer, for those who can connect the dots, at the press conference itself. He spoke, especially toward the end, of his enthusiasm for striking a new nuclear deal with Iran, probably including agreements regarding Iran’s support of militia groups in the Arab world like Hezbollah. And he said he was imposing new sanctions on Tehran, a return to the maximum pressure campaign of the last two years of his first term, with great sadness and pain. He repeated endlessly how sorry he was for it, and how much he looked forward to making a deal. The Iranians have been suing for an agreement for almost two years, and particularly since the collapse of Hezbollah in the fall of 2014 and the subsequent downfall of the Assad dictatorship in Syria, the combination of which have left Iran with no forward defense against Israel or the United States. Meanwhile, Israeli air raids have left Iran with virtually no defensive missile systems and no ability to produce solid fuel for rockets for at least another year or two.

The United States and Iran are poised to do the much longer, better deal that Trump promised—completely without basis—when he withdrew the United States from Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018. But now the only card the Iranians have left to play is their significant nuclear research and development since then, and Tehran desperately needs time and space to regroup, rebuild, and strengthen the Islamic Republic at home and abroad. They are weakened beyond their wildest imaginations, and they need sanctions relief urgently and immediately. They also need an agreement that would provide some assurance of regime stability, and this time they will probably be willing to negotiate voluntary restrictions on support to Arab militia groups like Hezbollah and many others that have proven ineffective. Why not negotiate a failed stratagem? Meanwhile, a sprint toward a nuclear bomb is not really an option, since Tehran knows that Washington has a ready-made plan that only needs to be operationalized to destroy Iran’s nuclear assets with a stream of bunker buster bombs dropped from B-2 bombers that are just waiting for the order to attack. It wouldn’t take more than a week. Iran would be sprinting not toward a bomb, but towards oblivion. So why not negotiate?

But Trump, too, wants to do a deal. He doesn’t want a war with Iran. He wants to be able to say that he has secured peace for some considerable period of time, perhaps 20 years, that he deserves a Nobel prize, and that he is much smarter and better at negotiating than Obama or anybody else. None of this will be true, because the situation is so ripe on both sides for an agreement that it would take absolute buffoonery to fail to secure it. But that won’t matter. The point will be that Trump can claim, at last, to be an international “dealmaker” par excellence. Choosing between that exalted status and hideous morass of a war with Iran is a simple and obvious choice.

But, if he does this, Trump will be greatly disappointing and infuriating the Israeli right, and Netanyahu. His facial expressions during Trump’s comments about Iran were priceless and revelatory. Israel and the anti-Iranian diehards in the United States are appalled, but there is every indication that Trump is moving quickly toward embracing Iran’s overtures, despite the reinstitution of full-on sanctions. So, Trump may well be calculating that he needs to give the Israelis something in compensation to protect his right flank and indemnify himself from severe criticism from pro-Israel forces in the United States. It’s easy to see what that might be: much or all of the West Bank. There is a ready-made plan: Peace to Prosperity, with the major Israeli annexation proposal and little Palestinian Lesotho as the focus. And not only might that compensate the Israelis with large chunks of the West Bank, although maybe not as much as they want, perhaps it could be enough for Saudi Arabia to come around,, especially if the annexation were couched in terms of simply applying Israeli civil law in much or all of the occupied territories. The word “annexation” has rarely, if ever, been used by Israel. The Israelis are masters of de facto annexation while fudging the legal realities. They can do this again, and possibly blur the lines enough to make Saudi Arabia satisfied that a Palestinian state is being readied, even if it is limited along these lines.

But even if this isn’t enough for Saudi Arabia, if the deal with Iran goes through, and Israel can be mollified by gobbling up large parts of the occupied West Bank with U.S. approval, then Trump could at least boast of his massive deal with Iran. And this is, perhaps, the deepest logic behind the weird Gaza proposal: it’s not about Gaza; it’s about the West Bank. It’s not about the United States taking over Gaza, it’s about Israel taking over the West Bank. It’s not about Palestinians being depopulated from Gaza; it’s about Palestinians being depopulated from parts of the West Bank. All of this is entirely within the range of possibility and it could fit easily into Trump’s transactional mentality: take away a war with Iran from Israel, but give the Israelis chunks of Palestine as compensation. No problem. Sorted.

These are the most likely explanations for Trump’s absurd ravings about “owning” Gaza and expelling more than two million Palestinians to some unknown destination. It could be a distraction or pressure play or, in my view, more likely setting the stage for a new and entirely sinister policy regarding the occupied West Bank linked to Trump’s intention to strike a new nuclear deal with Iran, also involving militia groups, that is a fairly easy diplomatic lift under current circumstances. In brief, I see this as an effort to placate Israel for a major change of policy toward Tehran, not a turn to friendship with the Iranians, but a decisive turn away from war and toward an agreement that both sides eagerly want. The attitude toward Palestinians and Palestine expressed in the phony and factitious Gaza proposal fits perfectly with a subsequent practicable and all too real proposal that is apparently likely to come soon enough on the occupied West Bank. 

Watch this space. It’s bad news.