A dangerous fantasy according to allies and enemies alike in an unusual, united voice.
An avalanche of push back a day after a "surreal" White House news conference
The Saudis stayed up late last night to announce their opposition to President Donald Trump’s plan for the U.S. to take over war-torn Gaza and create a “Riviera of the Middle East” after driving out more than a million Palestinians elsewhere by force if necessary.
The official Saudi announcement came at 4:00 am Saudi time, a few hours after the Washington new conference.
“The Foreign Ministry affirms that Saudi Arabia’s position on the establishment of a Palestinian state is firm and unwavering.” The statement pours some cold Saudi water on a Trump policy goal to normalize relations between the desert Kingdom and the Jewish State.
In the White House news conference Trump went full ‘real estate mogul” revealing his plan for Gaza to “clean out the whole thing” that Trump sees as a demolition site, a smiling Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at his side, the first world leader to visit the White House since Trump returned to power.
The New York Times declared his “improbable” plan is “one of the most brazen ideas that any American leader has advanced in years.”
While Trump framed his proposal as a humanitarian gesture for Palestinians who live in a ‘hell scape” but he made no mention of the man sitting next to him, who was responsible for that “hell scape” after more than a year of war triggered by the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Netanyahu praised the President for his “willingness to think outside the box” but critics pointed out Trump’s plan is illegal, forced deportation amounts to ethnic cleansing and a crime against humanity, and prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
Trump claimed “Middle East leaders “love” the idea, however within hours of his announcement, the President managed the unthinkable, uniting critics across the political spectrum, including in European capitals, Gulf States, Russia, Turkey, China, Iran, and Hamas. Egypt and Jordan, the states he designation as the ‘new home’ for Gaza’s Palestinians, said hell no.
Here's one other take away from the Trump news conference that seemed overlooked in the media accounts. The President was asked whether he’d back Israel annexing the West Bank, Trump said he’ll likely be “making an announcement” on the matter at some point in the next four weeks.
“That’s the lede everyone is burying, this isn’t about Gaza. It’s about the West Bank,” said Hussein Ibish, a commentator for MSNBC and a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
“Several ministers in the Israeli government reacted to Trump’s election victory by saying that now is the time to annex all or much of the West Bank,” as Ibish wrote in an opinion piece.
In recent weeks, an increase in attacks on Palestinian villages in the West Bank comes as the Gaza ceasefire and the Israeli hostage release continues after months of negotiations over a plan proposed in May. A Trump negotiator got the ceasefire over the finish line.
According to The Economist, the rise of violence is tied to the Gaza ceasefire. “Hamas and the Israeli far right both want to destabilize the West Bank.” The latest clashes, on January 20th, came as an IDF’s official statement blamed the violence was due to a spate of shootings and stabbings in recent weeks.
“But the immediate trigger was riots by Israeli settlers, enraged that Palestinian prisoners were returning to their homes as part of the deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza,” according to The Economist.
These are just the latest clashes in the West Bank which hasn’t gotten as much media attention as the war in Gaza, insists Hussein Ibish. He said this is the context for the Trump announcement.
“While what Trump is saying about Gaza may be a supercilious pipe dream, it could nonetheless be signaling very real and potentially disastrous change of U.S. policy regarding the West Bank.”
Will the U.S. President green-light Israeli annexation of the West Bank, a move that would dash Palestinian hopes for national rights? Or is this another part of the negotiations for normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia, a goal of the Trump administration and the Israeli Prime Minister?
Here is a hint of the approach from The Jerusalem Post, citing “coalition officials” who said on Tuesday, “Netanyahu may cede the annexation of the West Bank in favor of advancing the normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia.”
The reporting dismissed the Saudi position, reiterated hours after the Trump-Netanyahu news conference, the Saudi Arabia affirms the price for normalization is concrete steps toward the establishment of the Palestinian state.
The Jerusalem Post report continues: “In recent closed-door talks, Trump said that annexation of the West Bank is off the table.” But then adds this detail from a prominent leader of the settlement movement, “Earlier in January, Yesha Council chairmen Israel Ganz told the Post that annexing the West Bank was “on the table” with the Trump administration however, he noted it would “take time.”
In just weeks after taking power again, President Donald Trump has stepped into the quicksand of ‘solving’ an intractable, decades long conflict. Middle East peace proposals have a way of confounding U.S. presidents and sabotaging their legacies. Just ask President Joe Biden. Polls show that a significant number of Biden voters passed on Kamala Harris because of his Gaza policy that she embraced.
In 2020, Trump and his aide’s claimed Trump was long overdue for a Nobel Peace Prize. If the prize was behind his thinking in his news conference with Netanyahu on Tuesday, the reaction to his shocking proposal is a strong dose of reality.
Four U.S. Presidents have won the award, the first was Theodore Roosevelt in 2006, for his “tireless efforts to promote peace and his vision for a post- World War 1 world order.”
The most recent, Barak Obama, in 2009 for efforts “to strengthen international diplomacy and foster cooperation between nations”
President Donald Trump appears to believe that his plan for Gaza and the West Bank could be his ticket to Stockholm. The overwhelming reaction suggests that it’s best not to book the flight just yet.