President Trump likes to keep everyone — enemies and friends alike — off balance. He is, as is often said, The Great Disruptor.
The “Palestinians” are nothing but a political tool that they use … in the Arabs’ never-ending war against Israel.
Trump’s announcement Tuesday evening that we should take over the Gaza Strip and rebuild it into another Riviera — complete with a Trump Hotel and Casino, I’m sure — not only kept everybody off balance but it made several nations admit things they really didn’t want to.
The big problem with Trump’s plan is that about 2.2 million Gaza residents would have to emigrate — albeit temporarily as Trump indicated Wednesday — to other countries. But nobody wants the residents of Gaza, especially Israel’s Arab neighbors.
Saudi Arabia doesn’t want them. The Saudis took cover under the idea of creating a “Palestinian state” which they said was a precondition to making peace with Israel. Trump wants the Saudis to join in his Abraham Accords by which several Arab states agreed to peace with Israel, but the establishment of a “Palestinian state” is off the table as we’ll see in a minute.
Egypt made clear that it won’t take any Palestinians as did Jordan. Jordan’s population, we are often told, is made up of about 60 or 70 percent Palestinians. But that argument is about 50 years old. Jordan’s king and people like the way Jordan is and don’t want any residents of Gaza who will bring Hamas with them.
Jordan’s King Abdullah, usually a transactional ally of ours (and Israel’s), said he’d go to war with Israel rather than accept a single émigré from Gaza.
There are two things we can deduce from all this. First is that the Arab nations don’t want to spend a dime to rebuild Gaza. Second is the fact that those nations believe — quite correctly — that the Gazans are a lot more trouble than they’re worth.
It’s a story as old as the Hamas government of the Gaza Strip — which was “elected” in 2006 — and possibly as old as the nation of Israel which was formed in 1948.
The Arab nations that surround Israel won’t contribute to the rebuilding of Gaza because they don’t give a damn about the “Palestinians.” The “Palestinians” are nothing but a political tool that they use — as the Saudis now remind us — in the Arabs’ never-ending war against Israel.
The Arabs know that European nations cannot really afford to rebuild Gaza. The EUnuchs will give token amounts, even in the millions of dollars, to rebuild Gaza but that’s all. It will take tens of billions to do so. Both the Arabs and the EUnuchs believe that the U.S. treasury is the common heritage of mankind, so they want to rebuild Gaza at our expense.
Nobody wants a single Gazan émigré for their population, however temporarily. (The President wants to buy Greenland. That might be an appropriate place for the Gazans.)
Trump overlooked the fact that no Arab nation will accept the Gazans into their populations, far less to participate in their governments. The Arab nations have already seen hundreds of Hamas fighters — dressed in new uniforms complete with masks and apparently new AK-47s — parading around Gaza. They know that Hamas isn’t dead, that it is still in thrall to the Iranians, and that any of the Gazans they admit into their borders will bring instability to their nations.
Trump’s plan will never work. So what can be done? In truth, not much.
The Palestinian Future
After the October 7, 2024 attacks, the idea of a “Palestinian state” is no longer credible. The Israelis and Trump would never go for that nor should they. Let’s remember that successive Israeli governments offered a “land for peace” deal and the “Palestinians” rejected their plans.
In the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Liberation Organization agreed to a land for peace deal but none of the Arab governments had participated in that deal. Israel began withdrawing from the West Bank area but terrorism didn’t stop. The “Second Intifada” terror campaign began in September 2000.
Three times since then, Israeli prime ministers offered a “Palestinian state” on terms more generous than Egypt or Jordan offered when they ruled — respectively — Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 to 1967.
In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to a plan proposed by Bill Clinton that would have established such a nation in the West Bank and Gaza as well as East Jerusalem. But then-Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat walked out of the negotiations and didn’t return.
In 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dismantled all Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, pulling back to the pre-1967 war borders. But the “Palestinians” launched a rain of missiles and, in 2006, “elected” the Hamas terrorists to govern Gaza.
In 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a deal to create a “Palestinian” state in almost all of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and a formally divided Jerusalem that could have served as the capital of both nations. He presented Abbas with a map showing those territories. Abbas promised to study the map, but then refused to return to the negotiations.
The Palestinian Authority headed by Abbas has no power to agree to any peace deal. Iran controls Hamas in Gaza and Hizballah in Lebanon. It will never agree to peace with Israel.
Hamas will reassert control of Gaza if the Israelis don’t destroy it entirely. That means that despite Trump’s vision of a new Riviera in Gaza, no peace deal is possible.
The Gazans will live amid the rubble that Hamas caused to be delivered to them. And there will be a renewal of Israel’s defensive war against them once the latest release of hostages has concluded.
Unless and until Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Iran agree to a peace deal one cannot be made.
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