• U.S. Foreign Policy
• United States

February 5, 2025, 12:39 PM View Comments ()

From my 27 years of working in the official U.S. Arab-Israeli diplomacy business, I can say President Donald Trump’s Gaza gambit goes above and beyond the craziest and most destructive proposal any administration has ever made (and there have been some strange ones). In one fell swoop, standing next to an Israeli leader who looked like the cat that just swallowed a dozen canaries, the president let loose on a scheme that is not just impractical but dangerous.

Trump has now harnessed U.S. prestige and credibility to propose an idea that will be perceived as forced transfer or worse; validated the all-too-dangerous fantasies of the Israel right; undermined key U.S. partners Egypt and Jordan; made his own goal of Israeli-Saudi normalization that much harder; and for good measure sent an unmistakable signal to authoritarians everywhere that they have the right to assert control over other people’s territory.

All that said about an unserious proposal from an unserious man, I think we may have missed the real takeaway from that presser. I couldn’t help but notice that Trump was reading from a script as he outlined his proposal. More than likely, he had talked some of it through with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or had perhaps been influenced by him, though Netanyahu often appeared as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Far from laying down a marker or reading Netanyahu the riot act, Trump seemed detached from engaging on the matter of the cease-fire deal, asserting that he didn’t know whether it would be implemented and making clear that he’d met with Netanyahu to listen.

That all, of course, might change. Few things are guaranteed in Trump world except that things change. Nonetheless, Netanyahu left the White House as one of the happiest people on the planet. He now has talking points he can use with his far-right allies, arguing that his good friend in the White House sees Gaza the way they do—free of Hamas and tragically of Palestinians as well. Getting to phase two of the cease-fire deal—ending the war; freeing the remaining hostages; and completing the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from Gaza—already faced long odds before Tuesday. That head-exploding presser couldn’t have made Israeli-Palestinian dealmaking any easier.