President Trump rushed as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel congratulated his “desire to think outside the box”. But with regard to Gaza, Mr. Trump’s thought on Tuesday was so far from the beaten track that he was not clear that he even knew that there was a box.
Trump’s announcement that he intends to take control of Gaza, Moving the Palestinian population and transforming the coastal enclave into “the riviera of the Middle East” was the kind of thing he could have said to obtain an increase in “The Howard Stern Show” a decade or two. Provocative, intriguing, bizarre, scandalous – and not at all presidential.
But now in his end to the White House, Mr. Trump advances increasingly cheeky ideas on the restart of the world map in the tradition of nineteenth century imperialism. First there was the purchase of Greenland, then annexing Canada, recovering the Panama canal and reversing the Gulf of Mexico. And now, he plans to take control of an area of war devastated in the Middle East that no other American president would want.
It does not matter that he cannot appoint any legal authority which would allow the United States to unilaterally affirm control over the territory of someone else or that the forced withdrawal of an entire population would constitute a violation of international law. It does not matter that the resettlement of two million Palestinians is a Gargantusen logistical and financial challenge, not to mention politically explosive. It does not matter that this would surely require several thousand American troops and possibly trigger more violent conflicts.
The idea of Mr. Trump would be the largest commitment to the American power and treasure in the Middle East since the invasion and the reconstruction of Iraq two decades ago. And it would be a breathtaking reversal for a president who presented himself for the first time in 2016 by denouncing the strengthening of the nation and promising to extract the United States outside the Middle East.
“It is literally the most incomprehensible policy proposal that I have ever heard of an American president,” said Andrew Miller, former Middle East political advisor under the presidents Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr .
Trump insisted that he was serious, even if many wondered if it was possible. “It was not a slightly taken decision,” he said. However, it seemed so fanciful, so devoid of details, therefore in conflict with the story that it was difficult to judge at its nominal value.
Indeed, it seemed to be an idea that grew up on time over the day. In the morning, before Mr. Netanyahu arrived at the White House to meet Mr. Trump, assistants from the president told journalists that it would take 15 or over to rebuild Gaza after the destructive war between Israel and Hamas and that This would require working with partners in the region to find the Palestinians a place to live temporarily.
In the afternoon, when he signed certain decrees, Trump told journalists that the Palestinians would have “no alternative” to leave Gaza because it was just “a demolition site” . A little later, he welcomed Mr. Netanyahu to the oval office and went even further, saying that he wanted “all” to leave and that the Gazans should “be delighted” to live a place better than it is’ waited for him to expect Egypt and Jordan.
Then, at an official press conference with Mr. Netanyahu in the room was on Tuesday evening, he has taken the last stage, declaring not only that the Palestinians should leave, but that “the United States will take control of the band of Gaza ”and rebuild it in a prosperous economic destination.
It was not a temporary takeover, but “a long -term property position” and he clearly indicated that he did not intend to return Gaza to the Palestinians but would make a place “not for A specific group of people but for everyone. “”
What it meant exactly, he didn’t say. Nor did he say how it would be accomplished. Even he seemed to understand how wild. “I don’t want to be cute, I don’t want to be a wise guy,” he said at some point. “But the riviera of the Middle East!”
Others have seen nothing cute or wise on what was equivalent to “ethnic cleaning by another name”, as Senator Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat said.
“The idea that the United States will take control of Gaza, including with the deployment of American troops, is not only extreme, it is completely detached from reality,” said Halie Sofer, Director General of the Council Jewish democratic in America. “What world is happening in?”
Khaled Elgindy, a guest researcher at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, said that Mr. Trump’s comments were “really bizarre and inconsistent”, raising more questions than answers.
“He speaks in geopolitical terms, or does he simply consider Gaza as a huge development project by the sea?” Mr. Elgindy asked. “And for whom?” Certainly not Palestinians, who must be “moved” in mass. Will the United States be the new occupant in Gaza, replacing the Israelis? What American interest could it serve?
Trump was not wrong to say that Gaza is “hell” after more than a year of war launched by the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Israeli bombs and rockets leveled the Most of its buildings and destroys a lot from the infrastructure necessary to support a large population. No one else has offered concrete and well developed ideas on How to rebuild Gaza or offered tangible financial commitments to do so.
It was not clear if Mr. Netanyahu expected that Mr. Trump’s plan, but smiled at satisfaction when the president spoke of permanently giving Gaza from all the Palestinians, an action that Israel was did not dare himself. After Mr. Trump added that the United States would take control of Gaza himself, the Israeli chief said that the proposal was “something that could change history” and that it was worth “continuing This avenue ”, without explicitly approving the idea.
Some supporters of Israel were more efficient, seeing it as a means of securing the western flank of the country after years of Gaza attacks.
“Trump’s United States’s takeover of the Gaza Strip can ring out of the box,” said David Mr. Friedman, who was Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Israel in his first mandate, written on social networks“But it is brilliant, historic and the only idea that I have heard in 50 years which has a chance to bring security, peace and prosperity to this troubled region.”
In a reference to the Florida area of Mr. Trump Mar-A-Lago, Mr. Friedman added in a las“Mar-A-Gaza or Gaz-A-Lago?”
Death Klein, national president of the Zionist organization of America, said in a statement that Mr. Trump’s announcement “is an extraordinary declaration which could ensure the end of the Islamic-Arab terrorist group of Hamas and secure the south of southern ‘Israel after decades of terrorist attacks and the missiles are launched from Hamas in Gaza.
In Mr. Trump’s account, the whole idea of withdrawing a population of people and taking over foreign territory resembled as much a real estate agreement as the genre he continued in a life as a developer.
He seemed to have an idea floated last year By his son -in -law, Jared Kushner, who noted in an interview that “the property by the water of Gaza could be very precious” and suggested to Israel “to move people and then clean it”. But Mr. Kushner did not seem to consider forcing the Palestinians to go out permanently or an American takeover.
The idea of appropriating Gaza inserted the United States in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a way that the presidents who return to Harry S. Truman tried to avoid. The United States has long provided Israel with weapons, to diplomatically argued and have tried to negotiate peace agreements. Several hundred American soldiers have served as peacekeepers in the Sinai peninsula for more than four decades, and Mr. Biden ordered twice that the air forces and maritime forces defend us twice against Israel against missile attacks Iranian.
But the American presidents hollowed out the deployment of the type of great force of American terrestrial troops in Israel or in the Palestinian territories which would probably be required to take and hold Gaza. Even last year, when the American army erected a temporary floating pier to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza, the Biden administration made sure that the American troops were not on the ground.
Mr. Miller stressed that the cost of what Trump seemed to consider “the $ 40 billion foreign assistance budget that Trump and Elon Musk would call waste resembles a rounding error.”
Aaron David Miller, a former peace negotiator in the Middle East now at the Endowment for International Peace Carnegie, said that Mr. Trump’s Gaza’s proposal fundamentally contradicts his own aversion to the construction of the nation and could undermine his desire to Negotiate an agreement with Saudi Arabia establishing diplomatic relations with Israel with Israel. This would also provide Russia and China “a green light to resume territory as he seems,” he said.
But he added that “he is sure to say that it cannot happen”, at least as Mr. Trump described his plan. Instead, Mr. Miller said that it was a distraction of the rest of the meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu, who approaches Bibi nickname, who has not undergone real public pressure for extend the agreement of Cessor which took place last month, leaving him a lot of latitude on how to proceed.
“All the Hoopla of the United States that takes control of Gaza made us miss the real story of the meeting,” said Miller. “Bibi leaves the White House among the happiest humans on the planet. If there was never a demonstration without daylight between Israel and the United States, that was all. »»