• Human Rights
• Middle East and North Africa

February 5, 2025, 2:32 PM View Comments ()

So, a convicted felon and an indicted war criminal walk into a press conference. While this may sound like the start of a joke, it is precisely what took place at a joint press conference held by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Feb. 4, just before the U.S. president announced his plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip and have the United States take control of what he views as prime real estate.

Trump now adds Gaza—along with Greenland, Panama, and Canada—to the list of territories that he wants to take over. It may seem comical, but few in the region are laughing.

After 15 months of mass destruction by the U.S.-backed Israeli military in Gaza that—according to top international human rights organizations and scholars—amounts to genocide, the last thing countries in the region want to see is further displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.

In fact, Saudi Arabia’s government found it necessary to issue a 4 a.m. press release to reject Trump’s outrageous idea.

The Middle East has suffered decades of instability and conflict because of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that occurred in 1948 and the creation of an Israeli state—and the region certainly doesn’t want to continue down that road for the next century just to please a U.S. president who will only be around for a few more years.

By calling for such criminal policies, Trump is not only less likely to expand the Abraham Accords to include countries like Saudi Arabia, but if he tries to implement a takeover of Gaza, he might undo the foundational Arab-Israeli peace agreements that preceded the Abraham Accords—such as the one with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.

The destabilization caused by the proposed move could go far beyond the Middle East. What message will other powers like China and Russia take from Washington’s thirst to grab what it can with complete disregard for sovereignty, international law, and peoples’ rights to self-determination?

At best, Trump could become an agent of chaos. At worst, he could drag the world back to wars of mass destruction that defined the last century and gave rise to the very rules and norms he so openly disregards today.